


Child of Wolf

by eonism



Series: Pioneer to the Falls [2]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Anal Sex, Bottom Will, Cannibalism, Character Death, Established Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter, F/F, Family, M/M, Murder Husbands, Oral Sex, Original Lecter-Graham Child(ren), Post-Series, Sexual Content, Top Hannibal, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-29
Updated: 2016-05-16
Packaged: 2018-05-16 23:36:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 57,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5845327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eonism/pseuds/eonism
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four years ago, Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham slayed the Great Red Dragon and disappeared. Last year, Jack Crawford caught them. Yesterday, Clarice Starling was sent to the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane to gaze upon monsters in their cages. Tomorrow, Buffalo Bill will skin another woman. </p><p>But nothing is quite what it seems.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Interview

**Author's Note:**

> This story follows the general timeline of events as depicted in Pioneer to the Falls, and is something of an indirect sequel. All characterizations, relationships, and original characters are a product of that story. While not strictly necessary, it would be useful to read it first, especially as subplots emerge in later chapters to refer back to that story.

I.

Clarice Starling’s hands still smelled of gun smoke. There were tufts of grass like green flecks in her black hair; the flush of her face painted her brown cheeks an even deeper shade. The grass stains on her FBI windbreaker told of the tumble she took at the firing range, diving to avoid simulated gunfire during a raid drill. Vanity made her stop to inspect her reflection in the frosted glass outside Jack Crawford’s office door before she opened it, and disliked what she saw.

She didn’t have time to clean up as she quickly made her way down the hall of the Behavioral Sciences Unit. Crawford’s summons was urgent, and she dropped everything to answer it. Spotting her reflection, she blew a steady breath through her bangs and brushed away the rest of the grass. She dusted herself off, squared her shoulders, and rapped a slender knuckle against Crawford’s ajar door.

This was either very important, and or she had found unknowingly herself in some kind of trouble. She didn’t like not knowing which ahead of time.

Clarice found Crawford in his somber suite of an office. He was standing beside his desk, taking a phone call on the office line. When he saw her, he held up one finger and then returned to his call. The pause gave Clarice the chance to observe Crawford in person for the first time in two years as she waited at the door. What she saw made her uneasy, but she was careful not to dwell on such things.

When she last saw Jack Crawford, some two autumns ago, he was a guest lecturer at the University of Virginia. He had an austere sort of charm about him then, she thought, and quite the shrewdness. Rougher around the edges than most criminology lecturers, despite the structured suit, rigid tie, and the plush office. The quality of his seminar helped Clarice make her decision to come to the Bureau.

Now Crawford looked quite a bit grayer, and quite a bit rougher, than she knew him to be in passing. Under the amber light of his nearby lamp, she could see the shape of a scar edging his jaw. It was a slim line of corded tissue that hooked at its edges and was mostly obscured by his beard _. Mostly._

Crawford ended his phone conversation with a gruff, “Then see it gets done,” and hung up. He turned to Clarice and gestured to the chair across from his. His expression softened, as though deliberately. Clarice chose not to dwell on this, either.

“Starling, Clarice M. Good morning.” He didn’t have to look at her file to call her by name. It was tucked under his arm when she walked in, but he placed it on his desk as he sat.

“Hello.” Her smile was automatic, but polite.

“I hope the call didn’t spook you, Starling. Nothing’s wrong. I just wanted to have a chat.”

“No, of course not,” she said. It sounded a little too eager. She disliked that, too.

“Your instructors tell me you’re doing well. Top quarter of your class.”

“I hope so, sir. They haven’t posted anything yet.”

“Well, I like to ask from time to time.”

That surprised Clarice. In the last three months since coming to the Academy, Crawford ignored her. It had stung a bit, in some private way, although she never expected special attention or favors. She wrote him after she qualified for the Academy; to thank him for the seminar, and for lighting a fire in her to apply. He never responded. She had written him off entirely. Sitting in his office, bought off by his gentle demeanor, she found she had begun to like him again.

“A job came up and I thought about you,” he said. “It’s not really a job so much as an interesting errand. You put down here that you want to work for me when you get through the Academy, is that right?”

“Yes, sir. I do.”

“You have a lot of forensics, but no law enforcement. We look for six years, minimum.”

“My father was a marshal,” she said. “I know the life.”

Crawford smiled, if only just. “I’m sure you do. But I see what you do have is a double major in psychology and criminology. And how many summers working in a mental health center – two?”

“Yes.”

“Is your counselor’s license current?”

“Yes, for another year. I got it before you had that seminar at UVA, before I decided to apply for the Academy.”

He nodded. “Yes, that’s right. You wrote me about coming here.”

“Yes. You didn’t respond, so I wasn’t sure if you received it.”

“I never do. Perhaps this time, I should have.”

Clarice straightened in her seat. “I’m sure you had plenty else to do, sir.”

“Anyway, I called you down here because we’re in the middle of a new program. We’ve developed a questionnaire for profiling known serial killers.” He handed her a thick sheaf of papers, held together by a flimsy binding. “Do you find you scare easily, Starling?”

She shook her head. “Not yet, sir.”

“Good. It’s just a standard questionnaire, followed up by an informal interview. So far we’ve examined the thirty-two serial killers we have in custody, to build up a database for profiling unsolved cases. The one we want to talk to isn’t cooperating. I want you to go after him tomorrow at the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane and see what you can get out of him.”

She felt a swell of pride, followed by the dull pang of anxiety. She ignored the latter in favor of brighter thoughts. “Yes, sir. Who’s the subject?”

Crawford said, “His name is Will Graham.”

The room fell silent. Clarice only knew the name from newspapers, tabloids, and case studies. The crime scene photos were dissected in classrooms by instructors who treaded lightly on the topic. Rooms in Quantico always fell silent at the name Will Graham, like the bubble of hurt feelings that filled funeral homes and cemeteries. It was a polite, if uncomfortable, ritual. His shadow had loomed long before her time at the Academy, but she observed the custom of it regardless.

“The profiler,” she said. _“The husband of Hannibal the Cannibal,”_ she didn’t say.

Crawford looked like he was full of those hurt feelings, too. “Yes. He and Hannibal Lecter are currently at the Baltimore State Hospital, awaiting trial.”

“I’m glad for the chance, sir, I am – but why me? I understand that this is a sensitive case, given the circumstances. I’m just not sure I’m the right person.”

“Because Graham was one of ours, or because he was one of mine?”

“I didn’t want to imply anything, sir.”

He regarded her for a moment. “People talk. That’s fine. Let them talk. But that doesn’t need concern you.”

She nodded. “Understood.”

“And, as for why I chose you. I chose you because you’re available,” he said. “And because you’re qualified to conduct the interview. I don’t expect him to cooperate, but it’s worth a shot. If Graham won’t talk to you, I just want straight reporting. How does he look, how does his cell look, what he’s doing. Just the facts.”

“You said tomorrow – does this have any bearing on a current case?” she asked. “Buffalo Bill, or maybe things going on in Nevada?”

Buffalo Bill was the Bureau’s latest priority. A relative newcomer that started around Kansas City; he abducted women, starved them for upwards of ten days, skinned them, and dumped their bodies in nearby rivers. The particularly garish nature of the murders brought on a lot of media scrutiny, as the tabloids and crime blogs snapped up any news on the case. It made it difficult to keep pertinent details out of the press with so many ghouls looking for a scoop, haunting morgues and crime scenes.

“No. I wish it were, but the timing isn’t altogether coincidental, either,” he said. “There’s been a regime change at the asylum since Dr. Bloom retired as director. The previous director, Dr. Chilton, has taken up his old post after a rather lengthy sabbatical. We’re curious to see what’s been going on since. Shake a few branches and to see what falls out.”

Crawford leaned forward. His tone changed. No more gruff charm – only business.

“Now, I want your full attention on this, Starling. Are you listening to me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’re there for Will Graham, but be very careful. Do not speak to Hannibal Lecter. Dr. Chilton will go over the security protocol with you. Do not deviate from it. If Lecter talks to you at all, he’ll just be trying to find out about you. You don’t want to encourage that kind of curiosity.”

“What about Graham?”

“Shoot straight. Avoid eye contact if at all possible. It shuts him down, and you’re going to want to keep him off the defensive. Will’s like Lecter, but he doesn’t play games like Lecter does. That doesn’t mean you can let your guard down around him.” Crawford slipped and called Graham by his name, but Clarice said nothing of it. “So do your job, and don’t forget what he is.”

"And what is that?” she asked. “If you don’t mind me asking, sir. It’s just that you knew him – anything you have to say might be useful for the interview."

Crawford sat back. “No one knows for sure. There’s been a lot of theories, but…I just know Lecter got in him too deep for him to get to back again. Make sure you don’t give Lecter an opportunity to get into your head, either.”

“Of course not, sir.”

“Good.”

Leaving Crawford’s office, Clarice wondered just what it was she agreed to.

II.

“You should be excited,” said Ardelia Mapp. “It’s not like Crawford picked your name out of a hat. This could lead to something good for you.”

Ardelia was already dressed and ready for her classes, her short braids neatly tied back. As ever, she was already too encouraging for this time of day, as the dawn just began creeping over the Virginia tree line. Her eyes were too clear and her voice too bright. She cooked oatmeal in the microwave of their makeshift kitchen, of their too-small dorm room. The kitchen consisted of a corner desk with a coffee maker, microwave, and toaster. Piled beside them was a small collection of protein bars, along with paper plates and napkins, for late nights and early mornings.

It was a paltry arrangement, but it served the needs of two women inhabiting the same shared space. They shared more than just spaces, of course. Such intimate fraternization among trainees was frowned upon, although it was also to be expected, to one extent or another. An unspoken rule, as it were: to not advertise one’s relations, and give no one reason to look too closely. So they treaded lightly whenever outside the four walls of their room. It wasn’t ideal, but it suited them fine.

It suited Clarice fine. She wasn’t one for advertising.

As for Ardelia’s pep talk, Clarice shook her head and sipped at her coffee. She held the cooling mug between her cupped hands and waited for her bagel to finish browning in the toaster. Showered, dressed, and her makeup on, the drive to Baltimore awaited her within the hour. She chose her best bag, but a sensible pair of shoes – to make a good impression, but not come on too strongly.

“You always say that,” Clarice said.

“Because someone should.”

“I don’t know. Something about this seems off.”

“You’re just mad you’re running errands instead of doing something worthy of your time.” Ardelia gave Clarice a teasing look. “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”

“It’s not that.”

It wasn’t. Clarice would have done any menial errand, conducted any interview that was asked of her. Her intense ambition always kept her forward-facing, looking for a way to claw out an advantage for herself. Without the requisite law enforcement experience under her belt, she knew she had to jump through whatever hoop necessary to prove her mettle. But that knowledge didn’t do much for the flutter in her stomach, beating against her insides like the wings of some trapped animal.

She said nothing of that. Instead she put cream cheese on her bagel and sat down on her bed to eat and finish her coffee. Ardelia sat down, cross-legged, beside her. Their shoulders brushed.

“Don’t be sour.” Ardelia’s tone said _sorry_ , but her eyes had that same coy look. “You know I don’t mean it.”

“I know. And I’m not mad.”

“When will you be back?”

“The report’s due on Crawford’s desk at 0900 Sunday, but I’ll likely be back before then. He doesn’t expect to get much out of Graham.”

“Okay.” Ardelia gently nudged Clarice’s shoulder with her own. “Just let me know how it goes.”

“I’ll call you. I promise.”

Ardelia knew – just as Clarice knew she liked to hear it, nonetheless.

III.

Dr. Frederick Chilton of the Baltimore State Hospital of the Criminally Insane was a man with a story written in his skin. He sat at his long wide desk as Clarice Starling came into his office, his scalloped, high-back leather chair something of a throne. His body was a patchwork of mismatched seams beneath his suit, evident only on his wrists whenever his sleeves rode up, and on his face. The angles of his skull beneath the lasting artifacts of multiple skin grafts and reconstructive surgeries told Clarice that he had once been handsome.

The case file she studied the night before gave her the full scope of her subject, and Dr. Chilton’s patient, Will Graham. His was an interconnected web of crimes, both those he committed and those he solved, and the serial killers with whom he shared varying degrees of intimate association. Among the noted figures that orbited Graham’s complicated progression from FBI profiler to known serial killer, Chilton came up frequently. He had been everything from a psychiatrist to a colleague, a victim to a suspect, before leaving psychiatry to write about Hannibal the Cannibal during the killer’s first incarceration.

Chilton’s final entry in Graham’s casefile noted him as one of the victims of Francis Dolarhyde, who assaulted Chilton and set him on fire. Throughout his recovery, and during the subsequent manhunt for Graham and Lecter following Dolarhyde’s death, Chilton vocally maintained that Graham was responsible for his attack. Crawford said nothing of this when he assigned her the task. Sitting in Chilton’s office, Clarice realized she had been greatly misled about the full nature of the situation.

Even for it, her smile was strategically polite. “Thank you for your time, Dr. Chilton.”

“We’ve had quite a few detectives here, but I can’t remember the last time one came on such a merciful errand,” he said without getting up. Chilton extended a hand, which she briefly shook. The texture of his palm was close to leather, but softened by a thick layer of hand cream. “I hope the Bureau isn’t questioning the wellbeing of the patients in my care.”

“Certainly not, sir. This is just a routine interview.”

“Good. Because I’d hate to think Crawford maintains such a low opinion of my professional objectivity.”

“I can’t imagine why he would.”

“Oh, I can think of many reasons why. But I’m sure he would tell you if he did. He isn’t the type to sugarcoat his condemnation.”

“I’m sure he would, too,” she lied.

With that, Chilton shrugged. “Then I hope you find whatever it is you’re looking for. Although I can’t help but wonder what old stoic Jack Crawford would send you here for. He knows as well as I do that neither Lecter nor Graham will cooperate with any form of analysis. It’s become something of a pattern with them, I’m afraid. They feel it’s beneath them to speak to chattel such as ourselves. Not that you should take my euphemism as a slight, Agent Sterling.”

Chilton’s smile, even with his uneven lips, was slick. It put Clarice on edge.

“It’s actually Starling, doctor,” she said, careful to come off as calm. Not curt. Curt wouldn’t get her anywhere. “With an _A_.”

“Ah. My apologies, then.”

“And I’m actually only here regarding Will Graham, sir.”

“I see.” His tone downshifted. “May I see your credentials, please?”

He left her standing while he leisurely examined her ID card. She felt naked in the knowledge that it was temporary – good only for two weeks.

“Is this regarding a case?” he asked. “Some new creature Crawford’s fretting about?”

“No, sir.”

“You know, for the last few months, it’s seemed that every little student doing a master’s thesis in psychology wanted to study the pair of them. _Folie a deux_ is a delicious prospect, but I can assure Crawford that he’s wasting his time. They won’t suffer the indignity of being studied. Believe me, I’ve tried – prime specimens though they may be. And rarer, still.”

“Specimens of what?” she asked. “In your professional opinion.”

“Pure sociopathy,” Chilton said. “Granting that’s not the complete picture of their unique shared deviations. Lecter is far too sophisticated, too impenetrable by the measure of any test we’ve administered – and Graham is another matter altogether. He’s something no one’s ever seen before.”

“How so?”

“Hannibal Lecter is the devil in the flesh, Agent Starling, as far as we’ve been able to glean,” he said. “And Will Graham is the man that married him. What kind of man, do you imagine, could hold the devil so closely?”

Clarice felt cold. Chilton smiled once more – tighter, more practiced than the last – and returned her ID.

“See Alan outside. He’ll lead you to the maximum security ward. From there Barney will brief you on the security procedures.”

“Sir, I was told you would be present during the interview process, in case I have any questions or – ”

“I’m afraid I would do more harm than good,” he said, as his smile began to falter. “I tend to stir up the animals whenever I get too close to their cages. Trust me, you’re in good hands with Barney.”

Clarice nodded. She tried to smile, but came up short. “Thank you for your time.”

As she left, Chilton said, “And the next time Jack Crawford wants to have a good look at the animals, tell him to come see me face-to-face. In case he’s forgotten what his favorite pet is capable of.”

She said nothing to that, and closed the office door behind her.

IV.

Clarice flinched as the first of the heavy steel gates clanged shut behind her. On the other side, a kind-faced orderly named Barney explained all the necessary procedures. He was a giant of a man in a white smock and broad in every way, but his soft voice put her at ease. No pens or pencils. Don’t accept anything from the patients. Only pass them soft them soft paper, free of staples, paperclips, or pins.

In her skull, Clarice could already hear Crawford’s voice: _Don’t talk to Lecter. Don’t let him in your head._

“Did you get all that?”

Standing before the second steel gate, she tried to remain calm. She nodded and said, in the clearest voice she could muster, “Yes, thank you. I got it.”

“Okay. It’s past all the others, the last cell on the left. All the other cells are empty but Lecter’s, which is just across.”

“Why are the other cells empty?” Clarice realized too late that she had asked that aloud.

“Patients didn’t last long on this floor. Had to be pulled out,” Barney said. Casually, like reading a newspaper or discussing the weather. “Don’t let all the talk scare you. These two mostly just want to be left alone, with their books and such. Just let me know if you need anything.”

The second gate opened with a press of a button at Barney’s desk. Clarice took a took breath. She thought of jumping, and how paratroopers must have felt as the belly of the plane opened over the green world below. Beyond the gate, the corridor was about thirty yards long and lit up by skeletal ceiling fixtures. Cells lined each side of the hall, their small, empty spaces closed off by shatterproof glass.

Softly, the sound of her heels clicking on the bare concrete announced her approach. The thrill that Clarice felt was a guilty one. It was the kind of hot, sick rush that came of watching animals in cages, when one pressed one’s hands to the glass. She knew of the case from the press and from the whispers that traveled the halls at Quantico. Hannibal Lecter was a monster, a creature that defied categorization; Will Graham was once the most skilled profiler in the Bureau’s employ, and Crawford’s prized bloodhound. Then Graham freed Lecter from custody in a grisly escape that left ten agents dead, and helped him kill Francis Dolarhyde. They slain the Red Dragon, and fled together to Europe. That was four years ago.

Last winter, as the story went, Jack Crawford found them in Belgium. By then they had married, living up to the _Murder Husbands_ moniker as supplied by the media, and were wanted in connection with eight murders. There Lecter attacked Crawford with a carving knife and left him for dead. Once apprehended, neither said a word to the authorities except to ask: _“Where is my husband?”_ Since then they had become the stuff of nightmares for the Bureau, the kind of outlandish tabloid fodder that spelled for a public relations disaster.

As she approached, she imagined them as the beasts they were so often described as. Predators, things with sharp teeth and claws – the kind that traveled in packs and killed under the cover of darkness. In the last two cells, behind six inches of glass, she only found men. Nothing of the monsters their names conjured when spoken in professional company. Perhaps what she felt was disappointment, small and fleeting though it may have been, but it was most certainly tempered by fear.

Each cell was sparsely furnished with a bed, a desk, a chair, and two shelves for books, all bolted to the floor. To her right, Dr. Hannibal Lecter sat at his desk where he silently wrote. To her left, Will Graham read the heavy tome opened across his lap, seated at the foot of his bunk. Neither of them looked up to acknowledge her. Clarice felt sharply and distinctively out of her element.

“Mr. Graham.”

Silence. She took a deep breath.

“My name is Clarice Starling.” With care, she laid back on her West Virginia accent, and the demure roundness that stretched out her vowel sounds. It made her sound young, naïve, and just a little bit dumb. Most men fell for that easily enough. “May I speak with you?”

Lecter wrote for another moment longer before he spoke. Without looking at her, he said, “I believe you have a visitor, darling.”

“I’m well-aware,” Graham answered. He turned the page of his book. “That’s why I’m ignoring her.”

“You mustn’t be so petty. It’s unbecoming of you.”

“As though you have room to say anything on the subject of pettiness, dear.”

Clarice listened on, trying to gain her bearings before she interrupted. They were only interested in one another, bantering back and forth across the hallway. Ignoring her, dismissing her outright – likely to get a rise out of her. She had to tamp down the urge to react to that, and remain placid.

“I realize I came unannounced, but I’m just looking for a moment of your time, Mr. Graham. Then I promise I’ll get out of your hair.”

Graham said nothing, letting the silence stretch out pointedly to fill the void between their three bodies. From behind his desk, Lecter stood to approach the glass. Poised and catlike, he placed his hands behind his back. There was something of a smile in his eyes. It glinted in his diffused reflection as he studied her, as though keeping itself purposefully hidden.

“You’ll have to forgive my husband,” he said. “He may not look it, but unfortunately he was raised in a barn.”

“Don’t humor her, Hannibal,” Graham cut in sharply. “She’s either a sycophant or a Ph.D. candidate, and we don’t feed either one. They’re a bit too much like roaches, in that respect.”

“I’m actually none of those things, Mr. Graham,” Clarice said. “I’m with the FBI. I was sent by Jack Crawford to conduct an interview, if you don’t mind.”

“You’re one of Uncle Jack’s recruits, then.” Lecter definitely smiled this time. “May I please see your credentials, Agent Starling?”

Clarice retrieved her ID from her bag and placed it against the glass. Lecter leaned forward to examine her badge, and she felt even more vulnerable for it.

“An agent-in-training? Darling, it seems Uncle Jack sent a trainee to interview you.” Lecter sounded pleased by this information. “Evidently you and I have fallen out of his favor.”

“I’m still in training, yes,” Clarice said. “But we’re not discussing the FBI.”

In his cage, Graham closed his book. “You can tell Jack Crawford that if he wants to speak to me, he needs to climb off his high white horse and come down here in person.”

“He would, but I’m afraid he’s busy with other cases.”

“Then he must be desperate if he’s recruiting help from the student body.”

Graham looked at her dimly, then. It was the sort of long and syrupy stare that belied the malice that punctuated his every word. She took a step forward and held up the questionnaire where he could see it.

“I was instructed to conduct a routine interview, Mr. Graham. The Bureau’s taken a vested interest in gaining better insight both into your experiences as well as your treatment here. I was told there’s been a recent change in hospital administration, and I’m here to make sure you’re comfortable.”

“Comfortable?” Graham’s laughter was sharp and tremulous, as though the sound was rusty from disuse. “If by comfortable you mean Crawford wanted you to fluff me before you dissected me with that blunt little tool, then you’ll have to disappoint him.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said. Trying to play nice. To stay nice. “Any insight you would be willing to provide would be useful to the Bureau. It even might help solve some open cases. I thought that might interest you.”

“I can assure you, Agent Starling,” Graham said. _Agent_ , which he pronounced with care, was meant to throw her off, she was sure. “Helping the Bureau doesn’t interest me in the slightest.”

“If you don’t mind my asking, Agent Starling, how is Crawford?” Behind her, Lecter spoke up again, as though prompted. The shift in conversation allowed Graham to get up from his bunk and replace his book on the shelf. “He warned you not to speak to me, no doubt. Is he still cross with me for having made off with his most sacred lamb? Well, two now, I suppose – though I did return Miriam Lass to him, in my own time.”

Her heels clicked on the concrete from the involuntary half-step she took away from Lecter’s cage. “I’m aware of your history with Jack Crawford. I was told it wasn’t necessary to speak with you.”

Lecter smirked at that. “Quite cross, then. Tell me – does he still insist that I was the one who left him with a smile when we last met? Or has he lied so many times that he's come to believe it for himself?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Certainly he omitted the circumstances of your host Frederick Chilton’s disfigurement, as well. His face is quite a thing to behold, isn’t it? But Crawford can’t take all the credit. You would have to ask my dear Will about that, of course – although he isn’t one to boast about his good work.”

“You’ll have to forgive my husband,” Graham said. “His ego will collapse if he isn’t the center of attention.”

“Will, please. I’m only making conversation with our visitor.”

“Play nice, Hannibal.”

“I am being nice. I haven’t even said a word about her cheap shoes.” Lecter studied Clarice for another moment, then tilted his head. “If you'll entertain me a moment longer, I imagine you’re here because Crawford is busy with Buffalo Bill. Am I correct?”

“I expect so.”

“No, Agent Starling, you know perfectly well that it’s Buffalo Bill. Just as I know perfectly well that you came here to deceive us. I can hear in that tremble of your accent that you’re putting on airs. You think if you play the fool, we’ll buy whatever it is that you’re selling – because you like for people to underestimate you. It makes it harder for them to see you coming.”

Clarice swallowed. Heat made her cheeks feel flush; the vulnerability opened her to attack. “I’m not selling anything.”

“Aren’t you? Didn’t Uncle Jack task you to solicit a profile on his current preoccupation?”

“No.”

“Then you’re not working your way around to it. What a pity. How many young women is that now? Five? Six?”

“The police have found five,” she said. “But I came here because of the – ”

“I know why you’re here. Has he flayed his victims?”

“I haven’t seen the details of the case file.”

_Don’t talk to Lecter._

“It’s a simple yes or no.”

“Partially, yes.”

_Don’t let him in your head._

“The papers never explained his name. It’s a bit tacky, this one. Too pleasant for his peculiar appetites. Would you happen to know why he’s called Buffalo Bill?”

“From what I understand, it started as a cheap joke in Kansas City homicide.”

“They call him Buffalo Bill because he skins his humps,” Graham spoke up, then looked at Clarice. “As I imagine.”

Lecter licked his lips thoughtfully. “Is he correct?”

Quickly Clarice realized she traded her fear for a sudden, ugly, used-up feeling. She hated it. “Yes. Now, would you be willing to point that high-powered perception of yours at yourself?”

After a moment, Graham shook his head. “Crawford knows what he has to do first.”

Failure stung, but Clarice refused to let it show. Without another word, she tucked the survey back into her bag. Down the hall and all the way out of the hospital, she felt empty, unsure on her feet. She shouldn’t have gotten frustrated. She should’ve stayed calm. But they were playing games, and she couldn’t get a read on what the stakes were. She hated that, too.

At her car, she took a deep breath, pulled out her phone, and dialed Crawford’s office.

“Hello.”

“Hello, sir. It’s Starling.”

“You know you don’t have to check in. The report will be enough.”

He sounded so paternal just then. It only frustrated her more. Made her feel more off-balance.

“That’s the problem, sir. Graham stonewalled me, just like you said.”

“Did he talk to you?”

“Barely. Him and Lecter are playing some kind of game, but I’m not sure what it is yet.”

Crawford paused. “You spoke to Lecter.”

“More like he spoke at me. He kept asking about Buffalo Bill.”

“What did you tell him?”

“Nothing. Just what was in the papers.” She sighed. She wanted to ask about Chilton, and about what Lecter said, but she didn’t know if she wanted to hear the answer. “Graham said he’d only go along with the interview if you came down here yourself. Apparently he wants you to come off your _high white horse_.”

“I’m going to need you to stay with this, Starling. He’ll fight you, but he isn’t completely unreasonable.”

“But sir – ”

“I know what I said before. But I’m telling you to do this now. Are we clear, Starling?”

“Yes sir,” she said, despite the creeping feeling in her gut. “Of course.”

Crawford hung up. Clarice stared at her phone. Once her hands stopped shaking, she called Ardelia.


	2. The Plan

I.

The days drifted by at the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane under the perpetual hum of fluorescent lights. Time was an elusive thing there, constrained neither by the march of the sun nor the liquid drip of the passing hours. The sounds of clattering gates and footsteps travelled down the hallway of the maximum security ward in a familiar cadence; it was the rhythm of docile bodies and physical discipline. These sounds were often interposed by broken screams, be they the garbled rants of the disturbed, or those who railed against restraint and were met with further punishment.

In their cages, safely tucked away from the general population, Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham heard only music. It echoed along the corridors of their shared memory palace in compositions performed by firelight, as Hannibal’s expert hands compelled his harpsichord to play something to Will’s liking. Each morning they woke to the ceiling of their home in Paris. Sometimes they woke to bedrooms in other cities: Baltimore, Florence, even Brussels. These were the spaces that they had occupied and felt the safest, in those quiet years of freedom before Jack Crawford found them again.

Hannibal woke fist, as he often did. He spent the fleeting moments of silence watching Will sleep beside him. Dark lashes fluttering against his stubbled cheek, lips parted on a soft and noiseless sigh. Slowly Will came out of sleep, aware of the eyes on him. Will was always aware of Hannibal’s eyes on him – of how they watched him.

“Good morning, Will,” Hannibal said. His voice was barely audible across the space between their cages, but he trusted Will to hear it.

“Good morning, Hannibal,” Will replied. He blinked at the metal fixture overhead, painting halos behind his eyelids. He blinked again and found himself in Paris.

“Mr. Graham.”

The appearance of the third voice placed Clarice Starling in their study. Hannibal and Will sat in opposing armchairs by their fireplace, analyzing her as she stood before them. She squared herself up as one might before a firing squad, a slip of a young woman in a blue blouse, black skirt, and burgundy peacoat. The quality of her fine leather handbag matched that of her open-toe pumps. Hannibal smirked at that conscious detail.

“Have you come around again for more abuse?” Will asked as he got up from his bunk. He paced around the meager space his cage afforded him, unwilling to look her in the eye. She would have taken the opportunity to try to establish a rapport, or lure him into some kind of touchy-feely self-reflection. “Or does Jack have nothing better to do than throw his trainees against the wall to see which ones stick?”

Hannibal approached the glass to watch the exchange. Not to intervene, not yet. Not until it was necessary – or fun. And sometimes it was far more amusing to watch Will go.

When Clarice spoke, the stagey West Virginian affectation was gone. Her voice was stronger for it, and more confident. “While I’d love nothing more than to go home, Mr. Graham, I’ve been given permission to come here every day and bother you until you complete this survey.”

“Taxpayer dollars in action,” Will chuckled darkly. “Then I hope you enjoy yourself, Agent Starling. And be sure to give my regards to Jack. I hope he’s enjoying this, too.”

“I told him what you said.” Clarice began to pace alongside Will. She followed his circuitous route through the glass barrier, albeit from a safe distance. “I tried to get him to come down here himself, but he trusts that I’m qualified to conduct this interview on my own. I was hoping you could give me that same trust. One member of law enforcement to another.”

“You can spare me the routine, Starling. I’m not impressed by the song and dance.”

“What routine?”

“You’re not advancing my cause with Crawford, and you’re not speaking to him on my behalf. You and I aren’t on speaking terms.”

“You’re speaking to me now,” she said.

“In case you haven’t realized, you have me at a disadvantage. But rest assured, if I had a door to slam in your face, I would do so with great satisfaction.”

In his cage, Hannibal canted his head. “Pardon me, but what day is it, Agent Starling?”

Both Will and Clarice stopped to look at Hannibal. Will turned away. Clarice was taken aback, as though she had forgotten – or hoped to have forgotten – that Hannibal was still there.

“February 10th,” she said. “It’s Sunday.”

“Ah, then we’ve already begun Lent,” Hannibal said.

“I didn’t realize you observed, doctor.”

“I don’t. But Valentine’s Day is coming up soon, and I’m afraid Valentine’s Day makes me a little sentimental. I once sent my dear Will a Valentine. Did you see it in our casefile, by any chance?”

Will rolled his eyes. “Here we go.”

Hannibal walked up to the glass. He delighted in the way it sent Clarice back an equal number of steps.

“My husband will never admit to it, but he enjoys my little tokens of affection. In this case, I met a man named Anthony Dimmond while traveling abroad. I broke his neck, along with every other bone in his body. Then I sawed off his head, hands, and feet so that I could refashion him into a heart to give my beloved. I left it for him in the Norman Chapel in Palermo, at the altar where we eventually exchanged our vows.”

The blunt disquiet in Clarice’s face brought a smile to Hannibal’s.

“Perhaps, if suitable inspiration should strike, I could make a Valentine for you, Agent Starling. Would that please you? Nothing quite so intimate, of course. I’m afraid my husband is rather possessive of me.”

She shrank back, before straightening up again. Defiant. “Another time perhaps, Dr. Lecter.”

“What a pity.”

“If I can, I’d like to get back to the topic at hand,” she said, trying to recoup the ground she had lost. “Then I’ll leave you both alone.”

“You’re wasting your time,” said Will with a shake of his head. “I have nothing to say to you.”

“Not me, but you seem to have an earful to give to Crawford.”

Will came to the glass, then. To get a good look at Clarice, and so she could get a good look at him. “Did he tell you about me, Agent Starling? Did you tell you about how he lost me? Like a mad dog that wandered off its leash, and curled up in Hannibal Lecter’s lap?”

She studied him, weighed her options. “He said no one knows what you are. Although some people do have theories.”

Will smiled at that, twitchy though it was. “If I were you, I’d be more concerned about what Jack wants with you than with me.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s using you. I know he’s using you, because I used to stand right where you are now, looking at monsters in the teeth. And if he’s willing to lie about me, what do you think he’ll say when he’s finished with you?”

Clarice stepped close to the glass. “Even if you’re right, and he’s using me to get you to work up a profile, what do you prove by balking? Because, from where I’m standing, you have nothing to gain from putting me on.”

“A sense of satisfaction,” Will said, “from not playing into Crawford’s low opinions of the both of us.”

“You still lose nothing by submitting to this interview. Worst case scenario is you actually do some good from inside here. I can live with that, Mr. Graham. Can you?”

“Don’t pretend to understand anything about me, Agent Starling,” he warned her. “Or about Crawford.”

“Then why don’t you enlighten me?” Opening the hatch in the glass barrier, Clarice dropped the survey into the food carrier and slammed it shut. “And you can tell Crawford to come down here himself, since you’re so insulted that I did it for you.”

Will paused. He looked across the hall to Hannibal, then sighed. “Fine.”

Standing in the clean yellow sunlight illuminating the rooms of Will and Hannibal’s memory palace, Clarice Starling looked victorious. She turned to leave the way she came, along the bleak corridor to the realities of the hospital. Calling after her, Hannibal broke her stride.

“Agent Starling,” he said. “I’ve changed my mind about the Valentine, but I could offer you something more useful.”

She hesitated, then walked back to his cage. “And what might that be, doctor?”

“I have something of value hidden away for an old acquaintance. Perhaps you could retrieve it for me? Since my dear Will is doing you a favor, after all, you could extend the same courtesy to me.”

“What is it?”

“Oh, I can’t tell you. It would ruin the surprise,” he said with a smile. “But since I’m feeling moved by my husband’s generosity, I can tell you that it can be found at the Yourself Storage facility in Baltimore. I think you’ll find it very interesting, this _trinket_ of mine.”

She regarded him silently, then nodded. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“That’s all I would ever ask.”

II.

From Ardelia, 12:03 pm

_How did it go at the hospital? Any luck?_

From Clarice, 12:17 pm

_About as awful as expected. But I got Graham to take the survey, anyway._

From Ardelia, 12:19 pm

_Yay, :) Heading back today?_

From Clarice, 12:20 pm

_Yeah. About to drive back now._

From Clarice, 1:01 pm

_Can you do me a favor?_

From Ardelia, 1:07 pm

_Sure._

From Clarice, 1:09 pm

_Can you look up Yourself Storage in Baltimore?_

III.

In Hannibal and Will’s memory palace, even safe from harm, some doors were closed to the both of them. These doors often contained bad memories: rooms painted by blood and the absence of light, where there were holes in the floors large enough to fall through. Rooms hidden in the Lithuanian countryside or the shipyards in Greenville, occupied by the shadows of the dead. There was one door that was always locked. It offered them no respite, no freedom from their captivity. Instead it remained closed, for fear of what would happen if it were opened again, and what it would dredge up.

This door was to a room in Paris. Soft voices slipped out of it at night, into the corners of memories where music faded from hearing. Will locked it himself, and placed the key in his breast pocket. Hannibal asked him not to, but he knew why Will did it. He respected Will’s reasons and lived, uncomfortably, with their sting.

The rooms in the hospital came to represent different things in the year since their incarceration. They were replaced one by one by other scenes, other memories. Once weekly, for an hour on Sundays, they were taken out of their cells. Muzzled, shackled, and strapped into straightjackets, they were each led to the visitor’s room where two cages awaited them. The slim metal cages were placed side-by-side and at arm’s length of one another, where even shackled hands could reach out to touch through the bars.

This was one of the measures implemented during the last months of Dr. Alana Bloom’s reign. Her sense of sentimentality had long since run dry where both men were concerned; it was instead replaced by a cold pragmatism, and an understanding that some small concessions must be made to maintain peace. Concessions like adjacent cells in the maximum security ward, since all else previous attempts to have them separately housed encouraged repeated escapes. Will, in particular, had developed a nasty habit of biting the staff and getting out of his restraints. Each time he was caught en route to Hannibal’s cell.

Soon Alana learned it was simpler to remove all the other patients from the ward, as well. The rash of suicides and tongue-swallowings happening in their neighboring cells made it clear that Hannibal and Will were much easier to deal with if they were isolated. Of course, if asked, neither of them knew anything about such misfortune, and they were deeply saddened to hear of it. They required only silence and one another’s company.

Once those demands were met, they became model patients.

These weekly meetings were another such concession. An hour to sit in the sunshine that came through the austere windows of the visitor’s room. An hour to look at one another from the meager space between their cages, reach out, and lace their hands together. The moments stolen here held a room of their own in their memory palace, as the visitor’s room took the shape of Will’s little house in Wolf Trap. Secluded behind miles of Virginian backroad, it was silent and safe, far away from naked concrete and clanking metal. There they had the warmth of the fireplace, and an even warmer bed. They had no eyes on them there; no armed guards or orderlies posted at the door, heedful of the time.

Before the allotted hour was up, the sound of footfalls clicking on the floor invaded the silence of Wolf Trap. Chilton approached their cages. He was armed with a wooden cane, polished to a mirror finish. He hadn’t any use for it in years, but he had begun to carry it again whenever walking the halls of the hospital. The weight of it seemed to satisfy him as he dragged it across the width of Will’s cage first, banging it against the bars before he did it again to Hannibal’s. They were careful not to react. Chilton smiled nonetheless.

“I’m sorry. Am I interrupting something?”

“Hello, Frederick,” Hannibal said. “I see convalescence hasn’t done anything to improve your personality. That’s unfortunate. I would’ve thought the lengthy self-reflection would’ve done you some good.”

“Such clever insight, as always, Hannibal,” Chilton said. “You’ll have to be forgive me for being critical of any psychiatrist whose only success stories are comprised entirely of murderers and cannibals.”

Hannibal smiled brightly. “To be fair, Will was never officially my patient. All of his murders were the product of his own aspirations – as well as the cannibalism.”

Chilton began to pace around the cages, tapping his cane against their bars every few steps. “You know, some of the conversations I’ve overheard have been very interesting as of late. It seems our good friend Jack Crawford has taken to sending trainees to pick your brains about the latest creature to darken his door. Not particularly subtle, mind you, but I have to give him credit for his ingenuity. After all, you two have such a knack for picking up wayward girls – why not capitalize on it?”

In their cages, the pair of them said nothing. Betrayed nothing, but for the twitch of Will’s fingers against the bars. Chilton noticed.

“And you two have been keeping this tasty morsel of information from me. I’m not a man of faith, of course, but I recognize that sins of omission are just that – and sins must be punished.”

“I didn’t realize I should alert you every time Ph.D. candidates and law enforcement roved through your halls,” said Hannibal. “I assumed you were keeping track of that sort of thing.”

Unfazed, Chilton said, “Here is the lay of the land, gentlemen. The reign of Dr. Bloom has ended, and with it, all of your special privileges. Including these little _conjugal visits_ you’ve been enjoying. Bloom may have catered to your whims, but I have no such tender feelings for you two to exploit.”

“You prefer to speak unwisely, and carry a big stick,” Will remarked. “Although it does look like you’re compensating for something.”

Chilton gave the side of Will’s cage a smack with his cane. The sharp metal clank echoed across the visitor’s room. He paused, long enough for the din to pass, and then continued his train of thought.

“No matter what low esteem you may hold me in, I’m not a despot. I may sometimes entertain lurid fantasies of seeing you skinned alive, Will, but I’m a reasonable man. After all, I used to consider the pair of you as something akin to friends, in another life.”

“You really shouldn’t have, Frederick,” Hannibal said. “I can assure you, the feeling wasn’t mutual.”

“Cute, coming from a man in a cage,” said Chilton. “The way it stands now, you have two options available to you. You can keep playing games, and you will lose everything. Followed by your beds, your toilets, and the lights in your cells. At this point, I’ll have you both separated on opposite sides of the hospital, where you will have nothing but your thoughts to keep each of you company until the state finally puts the needle in you. Or, you can cooperate with the FBI on the Buffalo Bill case. You play your roles, I play mine, and you get to live out your sentences with some semblance of dignity.”

“Another book to write, I take it?” asked Hannibal. “I would assist if I could, but I’m afraid I only know what I read in the papers.”

“Don’t flatter yourself, old man. I know Jack’s gunning for his golden boy. You’re just his sloppy seconds.” Chilton approached Will’s cage, studying him through the bars. “You know, even with all those scars, you still have such a pretty face. It would a shame if something were to happen to it.”

Will smirked at that. “Wilier things than you have tried to take it from me, Frederick. I can’t imagine you’ll fare much better.”

Chilton’s smile turned acidic. “We’ll have to wait and see, won’t we?”

IV.

Clarice practiced the conversation in her mind a hundred times over before she walked into Crawford’s office. She examined every angle, every possible variable in how the exchange would unfold. She wanted to be prepared. She hadn’t been prepared before, when she walked into the hospital. Hannibal Lecter could read her; Will Graham could read her, too. While he wasn’t as fearsome up close as his casefile led her to believe, armed with smaller fangs than his spouse, his history with Crawford left her on unsure ground.

And she hated that, above all else.

Once again, Clarice knocked on Crawford’s door. He sat behind his desk, looking up to usher her inside with a beckoning gesture. She crossed the space of his office to hand him her report. He nodded.

“Good work, Starling.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Crawford reached out to take the report. Clarice didn’t let go.

“Can I ask you something, sir?”

“What’s on your mind?”

“Are you using Will Graham to profile Buffalo Bill?”

He paused, then said, “Close the door.”

She did as she was instructed before taking the chair from Crawford. He regarded her steadily, tapping on the desk. Whether preparing a lie or a hard truth, Clarice couldn’t say.

“Did I send you in there under false pretenses? Yes. Did that put you in a compromised position? Yes. But it was the only way to get in without things potentially going sideways.”

“I could’ve been more effective if I knew what was happening,” she said.

“Perhaps, but I chose not to risk it.”

“Why?”

“I don’t trust Chilton not to try to use this to leverage another notorious patient into his care. And I don’t trust Lecter and Graham not to smell a set-up. I knew they would shut down if they saw you coming – then they’d bat you around like a mouse to pass the time.”

“Because you think Graham can help you catch this one.”

Crawford paused again. “I believe Will Graham is the best profiler anyone has ever seen. He’s also at his most effective when Lecter is in his head. Fortunately, and unfortunately, Will has chosen to keep Lecter there for all intents and purposes. Having them both at my disposal puts me at a unique advantage. I had to try to use it.”

“Pardon me, sir, but – why not just go to them yourself? You knew them, you caught them…using me just seems like the long way around a simple ask.”

“It’s never a simple ask with them,” he said firmly. “They _will_ play games. People _will_ get hurt because of that. I’ve seen it before, and Hannibal already believes he and I are at war with each other as it is.”

 _“Aren’t you?”_ she didn’t say aloud. Instead she said, “I think Lecter knows more than he’s letting on.”

“How so?”

“He asked me to retrieve something from a storage lockup in Baltimore. He called it a _trinket_. I know he operated in Baltimore for a number of years, so I looked into it to see if it’s real and found an address. I would’ve written it off, but he was pretty insistent about it.”

“You think it’s worth digging into?”

“I do, sir. From what I’ve seen, he’s motivated by vanity – he wants you to go to him, and he hates that you haven’t. I also think he’s protective of Graham, trying to throw me off. This might be his way of killing two birds with one stone.”

Crawford nodded. “Then look into it, and keep me posted on your findings.”

Clarice felt warm all over. Perhaps Ardelia had been right about this assignment. “Thank you, sir. I will.”

V.

Daylight waned outside the walls of the hospital, but there was no sign of it inside the concrete enclosure of the maximum security ward. The orderlies came and went in their usual routines, returning Hannibal and Will to their respective cages. Unshackled, unmasked, unrestrained, and instructed under threat of pepper spray to stand against the wall until the doors were latched behind them.

As the retreating footsteps signaled their privacy, Will rubbed the ache from his shoulder, jammed as it had been inside the straightjacket. Masses of scar tissue from having bullets and knives lodged into the muscle made the old wounds easy to aggravate. He sighed, then looked to Hannibal across the hallway. Within their memory palace, they were in their study once more, far away from the intrusion of Chilton’s microphones and recording devices. There he found himself seated in his armchair, watching the crackle of the dim hearth across the room as Hannibal composed at his harpsichord.

Hannibal looked at him, then said, “Are you hurt?”

In his mind, Will closed the book he was reading and set it aside. “Not in any way that shows.”

Of the shared languages at their disposal, Will chose the one he knew Chilton wouldn’t be able to translate without help. It ensured their secrecy, even under surveillance. His Lithuanian wasn’t perfect, but he had four years to practice it before they were apprehended. And Hannibal was, if nothing, a verbose teacher.

“I hope _to hell_ you know what you’re doing, Hannibal.”

“I always do,” Hannibal said. “Have I given you any reason to doubt?”

Will began to pace his cell. Stillness wasn’t a comfortable notion, even in confinement. “You? No, of course not. But I’m still riddled with doubt about all manner of other things.”

From his opposing cage, Hannibal watched Will travel the floor of his cell in restless, concentric circles. At such a distance, he could do nothing but watch. Putting voice to the feeling it left him with would have done little to change it, so he said nothing of that ache.

“The plan has already been set into motion,” he said instead, “just as we discussed. Now we must wait.”

“I can live with the waiting. It’s this hole I can’t suffer – this _pit_ in me, like I’ve been hollowed out. Filled with broken glass.” Eventually, Will stopped. Over his shoulder, he said, “What Chilton said about the trainee –”

“Will.”

“But what if he knows?”                                  

“Crawford wouldn’t have confided in Chilton, even to arm him with that knowledge. That would put Crawford at risk, and he wouldn’t court the scrutiny. Not after the lengths he’s gone to hide what he’s done.”

“Crawford kept it off the record and out of the papers, but he could have told someone. Chilton could have found out – he could be using it against us. God knows it’s the easiest nerve to pluck. And the most enjoyable to watch.”

Hannibal sighed. “Don’t do this to yourself, Will. Not again.”

“Do what? Rant? Rave? Swear bloody, Biblical revenge on the houses of all our enemies?”

“You can’t torment yourself for what was taken from us,” Hannibal said. Softly, despite the language barrier that protected them from prying ears. “This wasn’t your failing – this was an act of cruelty, and it will be met with cruelty in kind.”

“Wasn’t it?” Will asked. His voice cracked around the question, his resolve buckling under its weight. “She was taken from my arms, Hannibal. I could have stopped it, but I failed her. _I failed us_.”

“You mustn’t be so blinded by your grief that you lose yourself to its emptiness. We don’t have the luxury of a neat and tidy loss to mourn, and I can’t follow you into the dark to mourn with you. Not if we intend to see this through.”

After a moment, Will took a deep breath to steady himself. To steady the rage coiled in his hands and under the skin. Then he wet his lips and leveled Hannibal a feral look. Hannibal regarded him, first with affection, then with certainty.

“I need you to face forward with clear eyes, Will. You and I will survive this, and we will get our daughter back – because that is what I promised you.”

“And we’ll kill them all for taking her from us,” said Will.

“Yes, my love,” Hannibal said. “Every last one of them.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, the daughter in question is Emilia, who first appeared in Chapter 5 of Pioneer to the Falls.


	3. The Patient

I.

Rain poured down on Baltimore as Clarice Starling arrived at the Yourself Storage lock-up. The accounts provided by the manager on duty dated back to 1978, when Yourself was opened under its first owner. Nearly three decades of paperwork and receipts sat in long white file boxes in the back of the main office, supplemented by the last few years of digital records on the office computer. Clarice sat on the floor amid her open case files, account paperwork, and print-outs from the years during Lecter’s known activity in Baltimore. She cross-referenced names and dates, looking for anything that would stand out or point her in the right direction.

There were no accounts under names matching either Lecter or Graham’s known aliases. One name caught her attention – Benjamin Raspail. His account was attached to unit #34, paid for in full (and in cash) a decade earlier. The name matched one of Lecter’s former patients and that of cold case with Baltimore PD. Raspail had gone missing a decade earlier, reported missing by his parents and had not seen since last leaving Lecter’s office for his weekly 5:45 pm Tuesday appointment.

Armed with a flashlight and permission from the manager, Clarice drove around the rain-soaked parking lot to unit #34. It was already dark. The manager hid under an umbrella and the cones of light shining from the headlights of Clarice’s car. He watched her futilely struggle to get the retractable door open, its track jammed from years of neglect. With the help of her tire-jack, she levered it open a few feet off the ground, just enough to squeeze through.

“It’s still jammed,” Clarice said over her shoulder, winded from forcing the door up.

“It hasn’t been opened in a decade,” the manager responded. “I’ll have to call somebody down here tomorrow.”

“You could help me – it’d be a lot easier than going through all that trouble,” she suggested, as politely as she could manage.

“Can’t. Bad back.”

“Of course.” She looked back to the door, then fished a card from her pocket. “This is the number to the Baltimore FBI field office. They know I’m here with you, okay? If the door comes down – or if anything else happens – just give them a call.”

“You’re gonna squeeze through there?” The manager took the offered card. “You’ll get stuck. I’ve seen it happen.”

“Well, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

Prepared for the worst, Clarice lowered herself to the wet pavement. She ignored the sharp chill of it through her coat as she wriggled herself under the door and inside the unit. Once inside, she clicked on her flashlight. She was immediately met with the taste of dust and the musty staleness of the air, thick enough to choke. The unit was packed, cluttered with cardboard boxes stacked up to the ceiling in haphazard columns. Their sides were eaten through by mice or sagging under the weight of other, sliding boxes, the contents sticking out where their containers had failed. There was furniture and clothing shoved into the spaces between boxes, and all many assortment of cheap, mass-produced curiosities.

 _“Could’ve warned me about the mice,”_ she thought sourly, but didn’t voice.

Clarice maneuvered through the meager spaces between dressers and boxes to examine their contents. Lecter said telling her about the trinket would ruin the surprise. What would surprise her amid such a strange collection? None of it seemed to fit Lecter’s tastes, as she knew from the notes in his files. His palate and purchasing habits were far too urbane for such cheap, tacky wares. It didn’t seem right. Wandering through moth-eaten clothes and dusty antiques, the rising sting of foolishness began to make itself known, like a knife between Clarice’s ribs. Perhaps Lecter had sent her on a wild goose chase. Perhaps this was what those two did to investigators for a laugh.

In the back of the unit, stashed behind boxes and a heap of half-rotten chairs, was a car. Mid-‘80s, a big, sturdy beast with a deep blue paintjob and cheap, cracked pleather upholstery. Its appearance was out of place amid everything else, so much so that that it drew Clarice closer. She shined her light through the windows to inspect its interior, where a small, oddly-shaped object sat in the backseat. It was under a sheet, its thin white material stained with grime and mice urine.

She stopped, reaching into her coat pocket for the latex gloves she had brought, just in case. Along with a plastic evidence bag. With her gloved hand, she checked the car’s handles and found the right rear passenger door unlocked. Leaning inside, the car groaned under her weight. The smell of chemicals and rot hit her; she gagged for it, covering her face with her sleeve. Up close she realized the object had the shape of a specimen jar – the kind for preserving animal or insect specimens. Full of dread but little doubt about the source of the stench, she reached for the sheet and drew it back.

The head inside the jar had been severed just beneath the jaw. It faced her, crammed in at an odd angle and preserved in alcohol. Over the years, the alcohol had evaporated until the top of the skull sat exposed and began to rot away, revealing the meat and bone underneath the dark hair. The eyes were lightless and milky, the mouth slack with a gray tongue protruding between the lips.

“Found you.”

Examining the head under the glow of her flashlight, Clarice was pleased. The sight of it, the _trinket_ , delighted her. It exhilarated her – the hunt and the discovery, and finally the strange, hot, sick feeling that came of looking into those dead eyes. The light danced across them but they mirrored nothing back. She wondered, reflecting for a moment from some space outside of herself, if this was a worthy feeling.

Finally, sitting in the dark with a dead man’s head in the back of a musty car, she realized she was proud. Then she chose not to reflect on it further.

II.

It was still raining when Clarice made it to the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. She hadn’t yet dried off, her teeth chattering as she pulled through the parking lot to the front entrance. Barney stood by the door with an umbrella. He ushered her with a guiding hand in as she climbed out of the car and raced up the steps. Her heart pounded against her chest. It hadn’t stopped pounding all night, as she called the Baltimore field office and the local PD to report on the head in unit #34.

Now she had to talk to Lecter, and to Graham. Crawford had armed her with the Buffalo Bill casefile before she left Quantico, left in the backseat of her car until she knew she could use it. Lecter would want to see it, she wagered; Graham would hesitate. She just had to figure out which one of them would deliver, and what they wanted it return.

“Tell Chilton nothing,” Crawford warned her. “If Chilton knows, the world knows. Stick with the story.”

Clarice had barely made it to the stairwell before she spotted Chilton. Or, rather, Chilton spotted her. He quickly caught up to her determined stride, the cane in hand.

“I’m not just some turnkey, Agent Starling, loitering around to let you in. You can’t just interview my patients and refuse to share the information with me.”

“This is just a routine follow-up. I realize this is unorthodox, sir, but I’m acting on my instructions from Jack Crawford and the Bureau.”

He got around her to halt her on the staircase. The cane blocked her path. “You would lead me to believe this has nothing to do with the errand Lecter sent you on?”

She paused. She didn’t want to fight Chilton; not when she still had to deal with Lecter and Graham. “You were recording our conversations?”

Chilton looked revoltingly smug. “I record every patient conversation I’m lawfully permitted to, Agent Starling – for therapeutic reasons.”

“If you’re unhappy with the Bureau’s interest in your patients, take it up with the U.S. Attorney’s Office,” she said. “Otherwise, would you mind stepping out of my way, sir? I would like to do my job.”

After a moment, and with grudging passivity, Chilton stepped aside. She traveled all the way to the maximum security ward on fleet feet, buzzed through by Barney and another orderly named Alonso reading at the desk. She took a deep breath to steady herself as she approached the cages at the end of the corridor. On either side of her, Lecter was reading in his bunk while Graham looked through papers at his desk. Her heart still raced, her wet hair dripping water on the floor.

Neither man acknowledged her. Standing still and shivering under the recycled air, Clarice was suddenly aware of the soreness in her muscles from struggling with the door. The casefile was tucked under her arm. After a moment, she chose to spoke first.

“I found your trinket, doctor. It’s something I’d like to talk to you about.”

At that, Lecter closed his book. “Did you? Was it useful to you, Agent Starling?”

“I’m not sure yet. I was hoping you’d tell me.”

A sudden clanging sound took Clarice by surprise. She turned, where she found Graham had passed a clean, folded towel through the food carrier in his cell. She looked at it, then took the offered towel to dry her hair.

“Thanks,” she said.

Graham said nothing, but leaned against the glass to listen.

“You must already know to whom the head belongs, otherwise you wouldn’t have raced all the way over here with so much conviction.” Lecter remained seated in his bunk, propped against the wall and looking straight ahead. Avoiding eye contact, she realized. Controlling the conversation.

“It belonged to Benjamin Raspail. A former patient of yours who went missing ten years ago.”

“How did seeing that make you feel?”

Clarice paused, long enough to consider her answer. “It doesn’t really matter how I felt.”

“Our first responses in moments of emotional distress are the truest and freshest experiences of our lives. You know how you felt, Agent Starling – can you put a voice to it?”

“I felt…afraid, at first. Then excited.”

“What about that moment excited you?”

“I felt that I had discovered something very important.”

“Are you sure you weren’t excited to come face-to-face with such a potent reminder of our own frailty?”

“I’ve seen death before, doctor.”

“I’m sure you have.” Lecter finally looked at her with a cold, level stare. Then he smiled, if only just. “You have the look of someone very intimate with death about you.”

She paused again. “Did you kill Benjamin Raspail?”

Lecter stood up from his bunk to pace toward the center of his cell. “Raspail was a garden-variety manic depressive, who numbed his internal strife with physical pleasures. Sex, drugs, drink. A spoiled trust-fund baby with a chip on his shoulder – it was all very tedious.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“I didn’t kill Raspail, but I know who did.”

Clarice stepped toward Lecter’s cage, close to the glass. “Tell me.”

“Raspail had been complaining about a man with whom he’d been having an affair. Over time, this young man had begun making troubling confessions to Raspail. He was beginning to fear for his life. By then, I’d grown so tired of him that I went to his home after our last session with the intention of killing him. However, when I arrived I found his lover had already beaten me to it.”

“What happened?”

“This young man had severed Raspail’s head and was in the middle of skinning what was left. He was a haunted little thing – black in the eyes and hungry-looking when he saw he’d been caught in the act. I could see that he was a fledgling killer. He had a vision in mind for how he would transform himself, but his methods were still the brutal workings of an angry boy. So I helped him cover up his crime and place the head in storage, in case I should ever need to call on a favor. He kept the body, of course – I couldn’t say what was done with it.”

She shook her head. “Why did you help him?”

“Professional courtesy,” Graham cut in. “Do unto others as they would do unto you.”

“This young man was in need of a compassionate hand to guide him,” said Lecter. “He was much like a young child in that regard, opening his eyes to the bright and dangerous world. It would be unkind of me to deny him the chance to make this discovery for himself.”

“What was his name, doctor?” Clarice asked.

“I’m afraid that’s all I know about the creature you’re hunting, Agent Starling.” Lecter looked beyond her, through her to Graham’s cage. “You now know as much as I know, and as much as my husband knows.”

Clarice followed Lecter’s line of sight. Graham put his hands in the pockets of his tired blue scrubs and walked away from the glass.

“I didn’t agree to this,” he said sharply, “and I don’t appreciate you speaking for me, Hannibal.”

“I trust you to speak for yourself, Will, and to do whatever you feel is best.”

“If you want to dance for Crawford, please, be my guest. God knows you get bored so easily if you’re not putting on a show.”

Clarice watched them each move independently in their cells. They paced the floor in contrasting orbits: Graham evading and Lecter giving chase. She studied the scene, trying to discern who was controlling the conversation, and just what she was being allowed to watch.

“I merely defer to your expertise as a former member of law enforcement,” Lecter said, demure as Graham sneered at the thought.

“I don’t know anything substantial about this case, and you feeding me stories about skinned patients doesn’t change that.”

“I’ve been authorized to give you the casefile,” Clarice said, inserting herself into the conversation. “You’re at your most effective when you have your husband in your head, aren’t you? Seems to me you’re in good company.”

Crawford’s words coming out of her mouth, she realized. The dangerous look Graham leveled her way confirmed her suspicion that he recognized the source.

“Does it have pictures, Agent Starling?” asked Lecter.

“Yes, but I have a feeling you already have a good idea what’s in them.”

“Now you’re just being coy.” There was a warning in Lecter’s voice, but it was softened by the deceptively boyish curve of his smirk.

Graham’s eyes flicked from Clarice, to the casefile, then back. Eventually, and reluctantly, he said, “Put it in the drawer.”

Clarice complied, careful not to look too eager. Graham took the file to his desk and opened it. He looked through the reports and notations, but focused on the crime scene photos. The women were found washed up in marshes and along the tributaries that fed into large river systems, spread out in a random pattern. Each woman was bound by the hands but not the feet, and there was never any indication of sexual assault. After a long and silent moment, he spoke again.

“You already know he’s a white male, in his mid-to-late 30s. You also know this isn’t his first murder – he probably started in his teens. He has a criminal record, most likely a sealed juvenile record. Look for a history of domestic abuse in the family. He’s targeting women, so his abuser was likely a female relative.”

“I figure he isn’t a drifter. He owns his own home,” Clarice said. “Or at least maintains a house, not an apartment. He needs somewhere to work, and to keep them before he uses them.”

Graham nodded, but never looked away from the photos. “And he _is_ using them. These women are material to him. He doesn’t consider them human, so it’s easy to dehumanize and disassemble them. They’re like dolls like that – just a collection of parts. But he doesn’t hate them, either, he just…he loves _what_ they have. He’s always wanted the skin, but he didn’t understand his desire for it. What it represented to him. Now that he’s comfortable with his desire, he’s not going to stop.”

“Why not?”

“This isn’t violent, or sexual – it’s not about power to him. He’s vain, and that’s what motivates him. He wants to use these women to make something beyond what he’s capable of being. He wants them to know they’re disposable – so he takes them, starves them, keeps them in the dark, then he steals what he wants from them.”

Silence filled the hallway, then Graham closed the file. Lecter watched on. Clarice could feel Lecter’s presence at her back, the way one could feel the eyes of an animal on them if they got too close to the glass.

“He really is a beautiful thing to watch, isn’t he, Agent Starling?” The naked affection in Lecter’s voice almost caught her off-guard.

Graham placed the file back in the drawer and slid it back to her. “If Crawford wants my help, he knows where to find me.”

Disappointed, but not surprised, Clarice took it. “Is that all this is about? Five women are dead, and you want to use that as leverage?”

“I spent years looking at dead women for Jack Crawford, Starling. I’d say I’ve done my fair share of looking.”

“How many more are you willing to claim responsibility for?” she asked.

Up close, his eyes looked black. She wondered if it was a trick of the light or her imagination.

“As many as it takes to bring Crawford here.”

III.

The rooms of Hannibal’s memory palace held a great many and terrible things. They were arranged in a sprawling composition that defied time and reason, unbound by the narrative of their lives. Will was familiar with design of the palace, as well as the rooms that overlapped between them through shared experience. One door in particular was unknown to Will. Many doors were, if he wandered the halls long enough, containing the things that happened in the lifetime before they met.

This door opened to a small apartment in Baltimore in the dead of night. It had been raining, and the air smelled wet and fresh. Will knew this now, because Hannibal knew that then.

Inside, Benjamin Raspail was dead on the kitchen table. Raspail was facedown; his back was laid open with a hunting knife and his severed head was in the kitchen sink. A young man peeled the flesh from the corpse’s body in thick strips of material, to collect and treat for later use. His pale blue eyes were hungry and his face was menacing, like a trapped animal was menacing – backed into the corner and ready to strike. He had struck before, and he would do it again.

Hannibal watched the young man from the doorway in his plastic killsuit. Their eyes met from across the kitchen. Hannibal knew his face and his name. Now Will did, too.

IV.

Clarice woke first to the artificial light of the library, and then to the sudden appearance of a coffee cup on her desk. She sat up from her scatter of records, files, and photos to realize she had fallen asleep. The library was silent but for the shuffle of feet and the rustling of fabric. People moved all about, taking and replacing heavy books on the shelves, or studying on laptops.

Her head was still full of cobwebs when she shook it, looking around to make sure no one had seen her. She pushed her smudged reading glasses atop her head and looked to Ardelia, who had materialized beside her with coffee. Ardelia, who gazed down at her sympathetically, squeezed her shoulder.

“What time is it?”

“2:30.” Ardelia pulled up a chair and sat down beside Clarice. “Catching up for class?”

Clarice shook her head one more time and took a drink of coffee. “No. I was up ‘til four o’clock doing that this morning. This is all from Crawford’s case.”

Craning her head, Ardelia looked through the disorder. She plucked out crime scene photos from Baltimore and Florence, Brussels and Prague. They constructed a grim and peculiar story: over a decade’s worth of killings, starting with Lecter’s known murders and spilling over into his shared crimes with Graham. Abroad they killed eight people that the FBI knew of, and were connected to three others whose cases were still open.

“What’re you trying to figure out?” asked Ardelia.

“Graham and Lecter are trying to leverage something out of Crawford, but I can’t tell what it is. Since they’ve been in custody, their only interest has been staying together.”

“Everybody wants something. They both knew Crawford back in the day, right? Maybe they have something on him, and want to try to collect?”

Clarice shrugged. “Maybe…this whole situation just doesn’t add up.”

“Well, you _are_ dealing with a couple that gets their rocks off by killing people,” Ardelia said with a chuckle. “Most married couples just fight, or go to book clubs. Or both. I know my parents did.”

“That’s just it: before they married, Lecter was a monster. No conclusive pattern, no motivation – he butchered people because he _could_. But Graham singled out murderers. Even when they took off together, all their victims had records, or some kind of shady past. It was selective, and careful.”

“A killer with a conscience?”

“No, Graham wants to be righteous, or at least _seem_ that way. Doing bad things to bad people makes you feel good,” said Clarice. “Crawford says Lecter got in Graham’s head, but Graham went with him willingly. Then he… _changed_ Lecter, somehow. Put him on a leash, told him how to hunt. You wouldn’t do that unless you loved somebody, and what they were capable of.”

Ardelia shrugged. “You do strange things when you love someone. Maybe that’s what’s still going on here. They’re running games on you and Crawford because they’re trying to protect each other.”

“You might be right. I just need to figure out from what.”

“You will. Hey, have you eaten yet? And coffee and a Kit-Kat bar doesn’t count.”

Clarice smiled, albeit sheepishly. “Then, no, I haven’t eaten yet.”

“How about we go to the chow hall and you can tell me all your theories on Bonnie and Clyde here?”

Brushing her hand over Clarice’s knee, Ardelia smiled in kind. Gently, as not to be noticed, but it was appreciated nonetheless.

“I’d like that.”

Leaving the library with her casefiles in tow, Clarice heard her name across the lawn. Crawford advanced on them from the laboratory building. He looked angry. She had never seen him angry before, and straightened up accordingly.

“Are you on your way to class, Starling?” Crawford asked.

“No, sir.”

“Good, because you’re done with classes for the day. Another body just turned up in West Virginia.”

“Is it another one of Bill’s, sir?”

“That’s why you’re coming with me.”

V.

Barney oversaw everything that happened in the maximum security ward. From his desk, he briefed visitors on security procedures and kept track of which staff members came in and when they left. Cell cleaning, prisoner transportation, meals – all under his supervision. He was known as a gentle and respectful man, who understood that the patients responded best to courtesy. Dr. Bloom chose to use the carrot rather than the stick during her time as administrator, and Barney took that philosophy to heart.

The patients in the maximum security ward liked to be left alone, as Barney by now knew well. Under his care, they were quiet and well-behaved. Hannibal spent the days writing or sketching while Will read. They had conversations in whatever language suited their needs at the time, often to bicker lightly back and forth across the hallway. It was the kind of good-natured sparring that, in another time and place, would have been charming. Behind bolted doors and shatterproof glass, it was often eerie.

The pair of them complied with instruction and never caused trouble for the orderlies. Hannibal always asked Barney what he was reading that week, and offered suggestions on texts he thought Barney might enjoy. Will never spoke to Barney, except to say, “Thank you,” whenever Barney released him from his restraints. Barney remembered to be careful with Will’s bad shoulder, and it was a courtesy that didn’t go unnoticed.

Even for it, Barney knew to watch his patients closely. He knew not to trust them, because he remembered what they were. That they were dangerous, especially because they didn’t seem so at first glance.

Today, Barney watched the sanitation crew clean the cells and mop the floors. Hannibal and Will waited patiently outside, muzzled, restrained, and strapped to their respective hand trucks. Gomez and Benson of the overnight security shift were buzzed in by the desk.

“Dr. Avindar wants this one to come down to the infirmary,” Gomez said to Barney.

Benson began to unbuckle Will from the hand truck. It was two full hours before the overnight shift started, but Barney decided to let that detail slide.

“It’s not on the schedule,” said Barney. “I’ll have to clear it with Dr. Avindar first.”

“The order came straight from Dr. Chilton,” said Benson. “Take it up with him.”

Before Barney had the chance to phone the infirmary for confirmation, Gomez and Benson had Will down to his straightjacket and off the hand truck. Hannibal watched from behind his muzzle, catching Will’s gaze from over his shoulder as he was led away. The security team herded Will out of the ward and down the hallway outside, then up the stairs for three floors.

The infirmary was only two floors away. Will didn’t see the point in letting Gomez or Benson know that he was onto them. Not yet.

They directed him to the abandoned ward on the ninth floor. It had been closed for months due to renovations. A clear path across the cavernous space was made from plastic hung from the ceiling, leading to an empty room. The room was littered with boxes and broken chairs, and lit by daylight coming through taped-up windows. Benson shoved Will inside and closed the door behind them. Gomez unsheathed the riot baton at his hip. Will held still as Gomez traced the edge of his mask with the weapon.

“Take the mask off,” Gomez said to Benson.

“Why?”

Gomez smirked. “Chilton said he wanted to mess up the pretty one’s face.”

Benson grabbed Will by the straightjacket to unbuckle the straps of his mask. Once free, Will lunged for Benson’s face. He bit down on his ear to chew through it, tasting hot, coppery blood. Benson screamed as Will tore the ear away, pushing him to the ground with the cartilage still clamped between his teeth. Gomez panicked and dropped his baton as he rushed to stop the gush of red pouring down Benson’s face.

On the ground, Will spat out the ear and licked the blood away from his mouth.

“Should’ve listened to Barney – he would’ve told you I was the biter.”

For that, Gomez kicked Will twice – once in the stomach, and again in the cheek. The room went dark under the concussive force, but before he passed out, Will decided to it was still worth it.


	4. The Chrysalis

I.

The house was finally, peaceably silent after the days of screaming. Each of Jessica Grant’s many rooms were dim and cool as she emerged from the shower of her big, white bathroom. Like many other rooms in her rambling, odd-fitting house, it was an immense space: all smooth tile and sleek Italian fixtures beneath the skylight overhead. Waxy yellow moonlight pooled on the floor as Jessica toweled herself dry, humming musically in a high key. Sometimes the murmur broke into words; whenever it did, her little dog scratched at the bathroom door and whined.

“Just a minute, Precious,” Jessica sing-songed over her shoulder. “Mommy’s almost done.”

She dried her dishwater-colored hair with the towel then shook it out, letting it fall over her shoulders. Then she wiped the steam from the vanity mirror, where her pale blue eyes met her. Her long body was pink from the shower, her hair sticking to her skin in wild curls and cowlicks. The length of her was scarred and tattooed in artifacts of a life she had never chosen for herself. It was the life of Jame Gumb, who was long-buried and far from Jessica’s mind.

Burns and cuts marked the insides of her arms, left there by her grandmother’s hand. The pucker of old stitches marked the skin on her ribs from knife wounds and broken glass. Sloppy lines of blue ink, imprinted into her from a junkie’s makeshift needle, marked her belly and shoulder in the tell-tale artistry of prison tattoos. These were cheap, ugly marks, like crosses and stars, peace signs and lop-sided clovers. She ignored all of that, as she had every day she looked in the mirror and surveyed herself. These things were temporary. Ephemeral. Instead, she applied moisturizer to her face and vitamin E to her eyelashes. and sang to herself. Once finished, she opened the door to let the poodle in.

“What’s wrong, you silly-billy?” she asked, bending to pick up the whimpering dog. “Mommy’s got you, you poor baby. Come help Mommy do her work.”

Still singing, Jessica carried the dog through the rooms of her house, then downstairs to her sewing room on the first floor. The room was once a small spare bedroom and was now a mess. Yards of loose fabric spilled from large plastic storage bins and sewing supplies tumbled haphazardly from bureaus and bookshelves. Mannequins, in varying stages of dress, stood gathered around her work table. Each held a section of her suit: an arm, a back, a thigh, pinned in place until they could be sewn into a final, complete piece.

She switched on the lights and turned on her sewing machine. With Precious lying at her feet, she sat at her table and worked nude under pale orange lamplight. Jessica enjoyed being nude, even if the skin didn’t feel quite right yet. She was close, but it would take a little more time – a little more material.

Humming, she carefully fed a length of freshly treated material under the needle to stitch two broad pleats together. The latest addition to her suit came from the back of a beautiful girl with soft flesh. There hadn’t been even a mole or offending hair to mar such a lovely hide. The girl was a size 18 with a porcelain complexion; from the moment Jessica saw her, she knew she had to take her. To _have_ her. Her mouth didn’t flatter her, though, much to Jessica’s dismay. All that crying – like a snot-nosed child, begging for her mother, moaning at night. It was such an ugly sound. It made it hard to get anything done.

At least the house was silent now. Silent and cool. Jessica could work in peace, just like this, with her little dog resting dutifully beside her. And when she was this close to getting what she wanted – all she ever wanted – work came before all else.

II.

Clarice had all but memorized the Buffalo Bill casefile by the time she and Crawford crossed the state border into West Virginia. There were five women in all, two strangled and three shot. Their clothes were always recovered from roadways near to the abduction sites, shirts, jackets, and dresses slit up the back. _Like funeral suits_ , she wrote in the margins. All five women were found naked and flayed of skin on their backs or torsos, washed up on a riverbank. Dumped off in local rivers, all except the first – the Bimmel girl, out of Belvedere, Ohio – who was weighed down with rocks to hide her. To make sure the horrors enacted on her died were left to the water.

She remembered what Graham said – that Bill stole from them what he wanted to take. Then she remembered what Lecter said – that this was the work of a man becoming something else, borne out of an angry, vicious boy. Bill stole their dignity, too, she thought as she looked through photos of their bloated, water-logged corpses. Nude, dirty, and face down in the mud and the grime. They were each stripped of everything but their faces. The faces used to bother Clarice, presented in the cold sterility of autopsy records and crime scene photos. After finding Raspail’s head, they were beginning to bother her less and less.

In the driver’s seat, Crawford looked at her. It was a sly sort of look; the kind she could feel without seeing.

“We’re lucky with this one,” he said. “Elk River, about six miles below U.S. 79. The body snagged on a fishing line sat out in the river – they don’t think she’s been in the water long.”

Clarice nodded along, but didn’t look up. Crawford glanced at her again.

“Tell me what’s on your mind, Starling.”

“Bill’s picking them up and dumping them along interstate routes. I-65, Interstate 70, now U.S. 79…What if he’s making a drop-off and a new abduction on the same trip? Drop the body off first, then pick up the next girl on the way home in case he runs into trouble. It’d be a lot easier to plead down assault charges without a body in the trunk.”

“That sounds a lot like an assumption,” Crawford said. It was of a soft tease than a reprimand.

“More like a postulation.”

“Good. That’s why you’re here. You’ll see things I won’t – I want to know what they are. You said you want to work for me, so let’s see what you can do.”

“Yes, sir.”

At first, anticipation made Clarice’s stomach lift. Then, listening to Crawford, she had to wonder how long he had known he wanted to use her on this case. How hungry for the chance he wanted – maybe _needed_ – her to be.

Crawford continued. “Being out in the field is a lot different than you think it will be. You work on a case long enough – think about a killer long enough – you get a feel for him. You find you don’t even dislike him all the time, as hard as it is to believe. Then, if you’re lucky, all those horrors you’ve been living with start to pluck at you – try to get your attention. Always tell me when something plucks at you, Starling.”

Clarice nodded. Then, although she knew better, she asked, “Is that how you caught them?”

“Them who?”

“Lecter and Graham? Something plucking at you?” She shrugged. “They were gone for years, not a word or a body in all that time. Then one day they just popped up in Paris, with eight victims turning up behind them.”

“You read their file.”

“Just to cover my bases,” she said. _“Because you were less than truthful,”_ she didn’t say.

His momentary silence put her on edge. “You’re not here to profile them.”

“I know, sir, but they’re assisting.”

“No, they’re offering insight, and not on an official basis,” he reminded her. “It needs to stay that way. If either Chilton or the media catches wind of the scope of your conversations, this case will turn in an even bigger circus than it already is. I’ve seen it happen one too many times.”

“I thought it might help me get at them better if I knew what they were like before they were caught,” she said. It sounded an awful lot like defending them, even to her own ears. Maybe Crawford had been right. “How much of it is an act, and how much is real.”

“They’re more like themselves now in the cage than I ever knew them to be outside of it. That’s all you need to know.”

She nodded again. “Yes, sir.”

They rode in silence the rest of the way to Potter, West Virginia.

III.

The beds were taken first, then the toilet seats, and the books. The paper and pencils, after, drawings rolled up and photos unpinned from the walls. Chilton ordered the lights in the cells to remain shut off, too, leaving only the fixtures in the hallway to cast a puddle of light against the glass. That was where Will sat, under the dim yellow glow that diffused through the barrier of his cage.

By the time Will had been taken to the infirmary, it was reported that he had gotten out of his restraints and bitten Benson’s ear off. The subsequent beating was a last resort to subdue him. He was feral, out of control, like a dog off its chain. This was what he learned after waking with his wrists handcuffed to a gurney, his face bruised and his lip split open.

As promised, Chilton followed through on his threats and emptied the cells in the maximum security ward. What was good enough for Will was good enough for Hannibal, after all. If they were held for the same crimes, they could expect the same punishment whenever either acted out of turn. Barney watched as the orderlies removed everything that wasn’t bolted down. He kept his mouth shut about Gomez’s story of the convenient escape attempt, as well as the unscheduled medical assessment that prompted it. None of it seemed right, but Barney was in no position to prove anything. Will knew better than to say anything, either, even as Barney’s eyes burned expectant holes into his back.

“Hannibal?”

Across the hall, Will only saw darkness. Since the lights were first shut off, Hannibal’s cage remained silent. He wasn’t used to such a menacing quiet. The halls were so often filled with music in his mind that its sudden absence made him uneasy. Unease wasn’t a state either of them could afford to indulge in. When he received no response, he raised his hand to press it against the glass.

“You can posture if you like, but this won’t change anything.”

The sound of footsteps on bare concrete preceded Hannibal’s response. His voice was low, taut as wire. Will recognized the danger his voice imparted, and how easily bloodshed would follow.

“From here I can still smell the iron of blood and the cheap musk of that guard’s aftershave on your skin. The image it creates in my mind is one too offensive to entertain. Fortunately, I have plenty of time to decide how to best respond.”

“You told me that we weren’t swearing revenge on our enemies yet.”

“I’ve been persuaded to abandon patience in favor of instant gratification.”

“Hannibal.” Will sighed. “Come to the glass.” After a moment, he added, “Please.”

As asked, Hannibal stepped toward the light. Rage composed his face in an unreadable mask. Will hated that; he hated how closed it was to him. Hannibal observed Will silently for the first time since he had been returned from the infirmary. He observed the deep bruise on Will’s cheek, the purple discoloration that spread to the eye socket above, and the bisecting wound on his bottom lip. Finally, as his expression softened, Hannibal sat so they were at eye-level. He then dipped into Lithuanian so that Chilton couldn’t listen in.

“I trust you paid those men back for their violence?”

“I bit Benson’s ear off.”

“Did you eat it?”

“I didn’t think that far ahead.”

Hannibal tipped his chin. “Good enough.”

Will started to laugh, but the pain made him wince instead. He asked, “Will you kill Chilton?”

“Would it please you?”

“Would it please _you_?”

“I hadn’t decided whether Frederick should be allowed to continue living with his disgrace. But he feels free to put his hands on you, and that’s an offense I can’t tolerate.” Hannibal paused, then said, “Unless you want that pleasure for yourself.”

Will let his temple rest on the glass. “I have a bigger fish in mind than Frederick Chilton.”

“Crawford thinks himself virtuous. It was that virtue that brought him to our door, to smite me for stealing you away. It will be that virtue that puts him on your hook,” Hannibal said. “We _will_ catch him. You must continue to be patient.”

“I know. Patience was your virtue, never mine.” A pause, then Will asked, “What about the trainee?”

“What about her?”

“Is she on your hook?”

“No. At least, not yet,” Hannibal said. “Her cleverness makes her useful for our purposes. It also makes her eager to come and look at us. I’m curious to know what it is she sees staring back. Or who.”

Will raised a brow. “You find her _interesting_?”

Hannibal chuckled. “It’s a purely intellectual curiosity, my love. You know you’re the only creature that has ever captured my interest.”

“Good. Make sure it stays that way.”

The silence that followed thinned Hannibal’s humor into a sigh. “Will there ever come a day, after all we’ve done, that you should turn to me and say, _‘Stop – if you loved me, you would stop’_?”

Will swallowed. “I would never ask you to stop.”

“You believe this? That you would never find reason to doubt me, or wish to be free of me?”

“I wouldn’t have married you if I didn’t, Hannibal,” Will said. “And we wouldn’t have had a family.”

“I know. And we will be a family again soon, Will,” said Hannibal. “I promise.”

IV.

Potter, West Virginia was a little town tucked away behind tall trees and miles of empty rural countryside. It was the kind of small town that Clarice recognized from a childhood spent walking along backroads from school to home, and church to home. Small towns like these had old white houses on either side of the street, with American flags hung from covered porches and old Chevy pick-up trucks in the driveway. Everyone knew everyone else’s name, and with it, everyone else’s business. It was a lot like home, and Clarice hadn’t thought of home in years.

Potter was so small that the Potter Funeral Home in the center of town doubled as the morgue for the surrounding county. It was converted from an old farmhouse with a big porch, white shutters on the windows, and flowerboxes in full bloom. The coroner was a local family physician named Dr. Akin, an older man with a smoker’s rasp and silver hair. He met Clarice and Crawford at the front door of the funeral home to shake hands and explain what was going on.

A service was about to begin in the mortuary. Mourners lined up on the sidewalk outside, waiting to get in. Two young local deputies hovered around nearby in the parking lot. They were the only members of local law enforcement left after Akin chased the others out of the morgue. There weren’t a lot of murders in Potter, and certainly none were this high profile. Their presence was familiar to Clarice, too. She knew their type – young men who always said _Yes, sir, no, sir, thank you, sir_. The kind that told dirty jokes in the department cruisers that were never repeated at the dinner table. Men like her father.

She smiled, despite herself. She said nothing about that as she followed Crawford and Akin inside.

In the embalming room, Clarice met with her first Buffalo Bill victim. The bright green body bag was tightly zipped up on the old-fashioned embalming table. She unpacked her equipment on the drain board while Crawford and Akin spoke in the corner. Then she pulled her hair back, put on the latex gloves from her kit, and took a deep breath. She had done this before in her forensics classes, working with cadavers to practice examining a body for evidence. She knew what to do, she assured herself, and took out her fingerprint camera as Akin unzipped the bag.

The victim was a young woman, with a full-figure and wide hips. Her pale skin was gray and her dark hair matted with dirt and twigs. The body was flayed from the shoulders to the belly, and there was a bullet entrance wound in her chest about the sternum. Clarice began by taking photos of the body as Crawford paced around the table. He said nothing but followed her line of sight, looking at what she saw from every angle. She chose to take that as a good sign.

“What do you see, Starling?”

“She’s not local,” she answered, snapping a photo of the victim’s left arm. There were ligature wounds on the wrists but not on the ankles, suggesting she was bound the same as the others. “Her ears are each pierced five times, and she has matte black nail polish. That’s a little too city for a town like this. And she’s got two nails broken off here on the left hand, back up into the quick. Looks like there’s grit under the others, too.”

“Take samples of the grit and the polish,” said Crawford. “You want to print her face down?”

“Yeah, it’d be easier. Let me do the teeth first,” Clarice said, attaching the dental kit on front of her camera.

Dr. Akin moved in close to open the woman’s mouth and pull back her lips. Clarice placed the camera against the face to get the details of the front teeth. Then she leaned away, angling her head to look through the camera’s view screen.

“She’s got something in her throat,” she said. “Can you hand me the forceps, Dr. Akin? And that flashlight?”

Akin passed them from her kit and said, “When a body comes up out of the water, a lot of the time they have leaves and things in the mouth. Happens all the time.”

She looked to Crawford from across the body. When he nodded his approval, she reached in to pluck the object from behind the woman’s soft palate. It was a dark, tube-shaped object, hard and organic. She held it up to the light to examine it.

“What is it?” asked Crawford.

“It’s a bug cocoon,” Akin said, taken aback. “How did it get way down there like that?”

Clarice put it in a jar. “Somebody forced it down her throat. We should call Baltimore PD about Raspail, sir. See if they found one of these in his skull.”

For a moment, Crawford looked just a little proud of her. Clarice felt proud of herself, too.

V.

Ardelia had already been asleep for two hours, in the too-small bed they shared, when Clarice rolled over to stare at the clock on the nightstand. It stared back _12:03 am_ in slim numbers that glowed blue in the dark. She had a class in five hours, then training drills all day at Hogan’s Alley in hostage rescue procedure. But, whenever Clarice closed her eyes, saw Jane Doe on the embalming table in Potter.

She saw flayed backs and broken fingernails. Women with their skin stolen and their faces too gray and distorted to be recognized by the people that loved them. Did their mothers miss them? she wondered. What kinds of holes did they leave behind in the world when they were taken? Did their skins fill some empty black space inside of their killer, or was it all for nothing?

At 12:09, Clarice gave up on sleeping with a sigh. She untangled herself from the warm trap of Ardelia’s body and carefully slid away to the unused bed across the room. This bed was Clarice’s, and they always slept in Ardelia’s. Seated on her own bed, Clarice opened her casefile. She put on her reading glasses and turned on the lamp on the nightstand to reread her notes from the funeral home. She had already typed up her observations to submit in her report, but she still had her handwritten notes in the margins.

Once again, and with eerie regularity, she could hear Graham’s voice in her head. _He doesn’t hate them – he just loves what they have._ Bill loved what these now six women possessed, and what that would mean to him. He was making something – transforming himself into something greater. He was bold in doing so, too, leaving little calling cards behind, if one knew where to look.

Just as Crawford said, seeing the things he didn’t.

 _And if he’s willing to lie about me,_ she could hear Graham say, _what do you think he’ll say when he’s finished with you?”_

_You have the look of someone very intimate with death about you._

Then Lecter’s voice was in her head, as well. It joined the chorus of male voices, each with their own agenda. Crawford, who wanted to groom her. Chilton, who wanted to use her. Lecter, who knew Bill but wanted to amuse himself above all else. And Graham, who had been a good man at some point, despite the brutal nature that pulled at him. None among them could be trusted, and that was becoming uncomfortably clear.

On the nightstand by Ardelia’s bed, Clarice’s phone vibrated. She got up and swiped the lockscreen open, finding an email from Crawford in her inbox.

From: Crawford, Jack

Subject: Fwd: Insect Specimen Findings

_Hope you’re awake, Starling._

She opened the attachment and murmured along. Across the room, Ardelia stirred, rolling over and mumbling in her sleep. Clarice went to the bathroom to read in silence, closing the door behind her. The specimen found in Jane Doe’s throat was a chrysalis belonging to a moth species in the genus _Acherontia_. It occurred naturally throughout India, Pakistan, and Nepal, and had to be imported on special order by collectors and breeders. Photographs of the dissected chrysalis revealed the moth inside: a wet, shriveled creature with folded, gold-tipped wings. On its thorax was pattern of downy yellow hairs in the shape of a human skull.

“Death’s-head hawkmoth,” she read aloud.

By morning, Baltimore PD would find another in Benjamin Raspail’s head, as well.

VI.

Beneath Jessica Grant’s house, her basement rambled on, room after room, in a dark maze of closed doors and empty spaces. Lifetimes ago, when she was still struggling with herself, Jessica haunted those strange rooms, far from daylight and human company. The doors to these rooms were locked and unoccupied for years at a time. Some held life inside them, or did, although the sounds of voices and breathing had long ago trailed into silence. Now that she had emerged from her chrysalis, she spent her time in a suite of rooms by the stairs – bigger, warmer rooms, with running water and electricity.

She felt safe there. She felt free.

With Precious trailing her steps, Jessica made her way to her hatchery in the basement. The room was black but there was life within it, filled with the soft sounds of beating wings. The air was moist and cool, and smelled of green things. Plants and leaves, nourished by water that trickled in from an elaborate system of tanks and hoses. She sat in an armchair in infrared goggles to watch her moths dance in their massive screened cages. And they did dance: fluttering, twirling, enjoying the darkness under which they thrived, and no human eye could penetrate.

She sat on the edge of her armchair and observed as an imago slowly emerged from its opened chrysalis. The newly-formed moth then climbed a stalk of nightshade, seeking a place to unfurl its still-damp wings. Jessica watched: silent, enrapt for hours as the tiny thing came into its own for the first time. Blood and air filled its wings as they spread out to their full length, stretched out above its back. As the moth dried, its delicate design stared back at her with a dead man’s hollow eye sockets.

Light swelled inside of Jessica at the sight of it. She leaned forward and blew a soft breath across the moth, who shuddered in squeaked in response. For it, Jessica smiled.


	5. The Daughter

I.

It was a misty night in East Memphis, Tennessee, and Catherine Baker Martin was driving home. The February evening had brought in a heavy, chest-high fog from the Mississippi River. Under the thin white moon overhead, the fog streamed around the headlights of Catherine’s car like smoke. She made sure to drive carefully, mindful of the slickness of the pavement and her limited view of the roadway ahead as she made her way back to her apartment.

Her silver compact was laden with groceries and snacks from her jaunt to the store. Back home her boyfriend was waiting for her with the promise of a movie and a loaded bong pipe. It was supposed to be a quiet evening in, before her mother rang her up for their weekly conversation. The routine was her mother’s one demand since Catherine moved away: one call a week, always on Mondays, and always at 9:00 pm. They talked about her father’s blood pressure, her grandmother’s latest hobbies, and her mother’s luncheons and meetings.

Catherine pulled into the parking lot and drove around to her space, 34B. She shut off the engine and the headlights, then unpacked the trunk. Catherine was a tall girl, sturdily built with broad shoulders and hips that matched. Her arms were full with grocery bags as she walked around the corner of Apartment B to her second-floor unit. The sound of a woman calling frantically slowed her stride to a halt.

“Precious! Here, Precious! Come to Mommy!”

Another woman was on her knees a few yards away, looking under a car.

“Are you alright?” Catherine asked. “Do you need some help?”

The woman stood and pushed her hair back from her face. She was taller than Catherine with long, light-colored hair, strands of which caught in her streaked mascara. “I can’t find my dog. We were on a walk and she got off her leash, and now I can’t find her anywhere.”

Setting down her groceries on the curb, Catherine approached. “It’s okay. What’s your dog’s name?”

Wiping her eyes, the woman answered, “Her name’s Precious, she’s a poodle. Thank you so much for your help. If something happened to my baby, I would just die.”

Catherine called for the dog sweetly, making kissing noises and clapping her hands. She didn’t hear a dog, or see one when she pulled up. Then she stooped to look under a beige panel van and called again.

“Are you sure she ran over here?”

“I don’t know,” the woman answered. “I just got so scared. I’ve been looking all over.”

Catherine didn’t hear the woman’s footsteps advance on her. She didn’t have time to react as the woman’s hand tangled in her hair to wrench her head back and slam it against the van’s door. Once, then again so that her ears rang and her vision danced. The world faded in and out of her peripheral as she found herself dragged into the back of the van. Face down across the seat, her jacket and top slit up the back and peeled away.

The last thing Catherine Baker Martin remembered was the feel of hands on her back. Splayed fingers traced her shoulder blades and spine, their edges rough, the palms flat as they pet her like an animal. It was 9:00 pm, but she had no way of knowing that. As she was driven away into the fog, her phone rang in her purse. The caller ID read _Mom_ – the Junior Senator from Tennessee, Ruth Martin.

II.

The twin cages in the visitor’s room at the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane now stood ten feet apart. This chasm of space brought a certain black glee to Frederick Chilton’s scarred face. Leaning on his cane, he observed the patients, stoic they remained, inside their confines. The lingering bruise on Will Graham’s cheek only served to deepen that theatrical delight as Chilton stepped forward to examine it up close.

“That looks like it smarts,” he said with an affected wince.

Will didn’t meet his gaze. “I’ve had worse.”

The humor fell from the line of Chilton’s asymmetrical mouth. It was quickly replaced by venom.

“I gave you plenty of opportunities to act like adults, and instead I find you’ve committed yourselves to flinging excrement around like caged monkeys.”

Hannibal gave Will an askew glance in the next cage. He said something in Lithuanian, to which Will replied in kind. Chilton scoffed.

“You can spare me the act. I figured out weeks ago that you’ve been passing notes in class at my expense.”

“A direct English translation would be difficult to try to explain, given the lexical differences,” Hannibal said, “but it was quite funny.”

“I’m sure it was.” Chilton returned his attention to Will. He produced Benson’s severed ear in a plastic medical bag. “I thought you’d like to have this back. By the time this was recovered, the doctors said the ear couldn’t be saved. As I recall, it was an ear that brought you to my hospital the last time, too. Funny how history repeats itself – you, here, under my care again. Trying to undermine me while you paw at Crawford’s door, begging to be let back into his graces.”

“You mustn’t blame dear Will for your professional failures, Frederick,” Hannibal chimed in again. “In a perfect world, you wouldn’t be allowed to keep embarrassing yourself as a psychiatrist. But as this is an imperfect world, we must all suffer through this together.”

“In a perfect world, I would be allowed to have the pair of you disemboweled and your heads put on pikes,” said Chilton. “However, I’m willing to settle for keeping you in cages. The charge comes with its own unique sense of satisfaction.”

Trailing his cane against the bars of Will’s cage, Chilton began to pace around it. Will said nothing, nor did he give Chilton the satisfaction of watching him flinch when the cane clattered loudly against the metal that surrounded him. It was a familiar routine by now.

“I made you a deal, Graham, and I was very clear about the terms. You tell Crawford and his little firecracker everything he needs to know to put Buffalo Bill in my hospital, and you two get to enjoy what few privileges I’m legally required to give you. Otherwise, I’ll make your lives a living nightmare.”

“Nightmares require imagination, Frederick,” Will said. “Which is something you happen to lack.”

Chilton’s smile returned as he paused. He leaned in to examine Will’s wounds once more, taking stock of the discoloration of his cheek and eye socket. His smile darkened for it.

“You know, I see now that I made a mistake in sending those guards after your face. What I should have done was turn you loose in the main ward. Upstairs the patients like to hold down the pretty ones and knock out their teeth. It keeps them from biting back, which is something you could stand to learn.”

Rage made Will silent, so Hannibal spoke instead.

“The last man who saw fit to touch my husband’s face ended up losing his, when I removed it with a scalpel and fed his body to pigs. Would you like to know what I will do to you, Frederick?”

“No, but do go on,” Chilton said. “I know how much the sound of your own voice amuses you.”

“I’ll begin by murdering everyone in your employ. Once I’ve finished, I’ll find you and pull you out of whatever lowly hiding place you’ve found. Then, while my husband watches, I’ll unstitch that borrowed skin you wear piece by piece, so that you die faceless and forgotten – just as you’ve always feared.”

“Is that the patented _Lecter promise_ that used to keep Dr. and Mrs. Bloom up at night?”

“Yes,” Hannibal answered. “And I always keep my promises.”

After a moment, Chilton sighed. “Do you even hear yourself, Hannibal? It’s almost tragic how transparent you’ve become, running to his defense every time he so much as mewls. You used to be so interesting – now you’re gutless, fangless, and boring.”

Silence, then. His patients quieted, Chilton paced away with a twirl of his cane.

“Let me make this very simple: there’s no one coming for you, gentlemen. Crawford won’t meet with you, and you’ve managed to alienate or eat everyone who ever mistook you as worthwhile. This means you belong to me. Either you help put Buffalo Bill in my hospital, or I feed Will to the wolves upstairs. And I won’t lose a wink of sleep in the feeding, I can assure you.”

When they said nothing, he smiled once more.

“Choose wisely. Until next time, gentlemen.”

III.

The slamming doors and garbled screams that accompanied Clarice’s descent through the hospital were getting easier to shut out. Approaching the silence of the maximum security ward, she steeled herself against the feel of eyes on her as she walked. It steeled her against the horrors tucked away inside the casefile under her arm, and gave her the time to clear her head. Soon it would be filled with voices; Lecter and Graham had a way of putting them there.

Perhaps this would be her last visit, she thought, if she were lucky. The calling card pulled out of the Elk River Jane Doe was corroborated when Baltimore PD pulled an identical moth chrysalis out of Benjamin Raspail’s head earlier that morning. That narrowed the search considerably. Crawford’s office was busy tracking down breeders and sellers of death’s-head hawk-moths, cross-referencing with purchases made by collectors in a hundred-mile radius of Buffalo Bill’s known route. If she could get something substantial out of Graham, she just might help catch Bill.

She might just stop waking to thoughts of Lecter’s Valentines and trinkets, and dead women in the mud.

At the first gate, an orderly named Alonzo buzzed Clarice in. Barney sat at the desk with a weathered paperback edition of Jane Austen’s _Sense and Sensibility_. He looked up at her with a smile and held his place between the pages with a big index finger. She smiled in kind.

“Welcome back.”

“Hello, Barney.”

Barney pressed the button on his console to unlock the second gate. “The lights are out in their cells on Dr. Chilton’s order. They might not be feeling chatty today.” He paused, then said, “There was an incident.”

“What kind of incident?”

“I’m not sure I’m allowed to say, frankly. Just let me know if you need anything, okay?”

That did nothing to settle her, but she nodded pleasantly, nonetheless. “Thank you.”

Clarice traveled down the corridor to find the cells on either side of her black. She couldn’t see inside Graham or Lecter’s cages, but standing under the spotlight of the overhead fixtures, she was certain their occupants could see her. The realization melted the strong face she maintained, if only by degrees.

“Teach us to care and not care,” Lecter said melodically from somewhere in the dark. “Teach us to be still.”

“Hello, Dr. Lecter,” she said. “Mr. Graham.”

“You still think formality will get you everywhere, Agent Starling?” asked Graham. His voice held a rasp, frayed at its edges. He didn’t sound as sharp as he usually did, ready to fight her. He just sounded tired.

“It’s how I was raised, sir.” Clarice stepped close to Graham’s cage. The points of her shoes touched the edges of her spotlight; it created a sense of safety, a boundary between her body and his. “What would you rather I call you?”

“Don’t bury the lead. You’d rather call me Will, because it implies a level of intimacy beyond what you’ve found reading my casefile.”

“I think I’ve come to understand you fairly well, all things considered,” she said, just a little hopeful as she probed the topic.

“Then, please – enlighten me.”

Graham remained silent in his cage, but Lecter moved in his. He was watching. Waiting. She kept that in mind.

“I know you used to work homicide in New Orleans, back when you were a cop. I know you were an instructor at Quantico after that, long before my time. People say you were a bit of a hard-ass. I also know you’ve been married twice now, and you had a step-son.”

A pause. Then Graham said, in a strange and faraway voice, “You shouldn’t believe everything that you read, Agent Starling. Not when you consider who’s doing the writing.”

Before Clarice could respond, Lecter spoke next.

“What about the trainee, dear? She asks so many questions of us – I think the private details of her life should be fair game, as well. Don’t you?”

“I don’t find her that interesting,” Graham said pointedly.

“Please. Don’t dredge that up in front of company. It’s rude.” Lecter appeared at the glass, his body half-hidden by shadow. It made the angles of his face sharper, his eyes black and expressionless. She was certain he knew this, and enjoyed every moment of it. “Agent Starling, I suspect you were an only child. You never learned to share, because you never had to compete for the affection of your parents. This makes you proud, but thin-skinned – nobody else around to toughen you up.”

Her pride stung like needles, but Clarice was careful not to let it show. “It was just the three of us, yes. Me and my parents.”

“She’s either an army brat, or a cop’s kid,” Graham added. “Authority figures don’t give her pause, because she’s used to wrapping herself up in a certain, comfortable blanket of righteousness.”

“Was it your father or your mother?” Lecter asked. “Your father, I imagine. You seem the type.”

“My father was a marshal,” she answered.

“And your mother?”

“My mother worked as a housekeeper, at a motel in town. She died when I was very young – I didn’t know her that well. My father raised me until I was 10.”

A knot gathered in Clarice’s stomach. She shouldn’t have said that. These sorts of confessions were treading on territory Ardelia didn’t know about, even after seeing one another for two months.

“You’re an orphan, then,” said Lecter. “How did your father die?”

“One night he surprised two burglars coming out the back of a pharmacy. He was shot.”

“Crawford has a certain affinity for collecting orphans,” Graham said distantly. “He comes in the guise of a father-figure, with no children of his own to shape. Makes it easier to trust him when he sends you walking into the fire.”

Clarice took a deep breath and straightened up. “I’ve answered your questions – now it’s only fair you answer mine.”

Slowly, Graham approached the light. What she first thought was a trick of the shadow revealed the deep bruise in his cheek.

“I assume they pulled another body out of the water,” he said. “As I doubt you came all the way down here for the company.”

“What happened to your face?”

Graham smiled, although it wavered slightly. “This is what happens when you bite off a guard’s ear.”

“Why?”

“I’ve been informed I’m deranged, and can’t be trusted around any body parts that stick out.”

“Is that supposed to scare me, Mr. Graham?”

“If you were honestly scared of me, Agent Starling, you wouldn’t keep coming back here. Now give me the file. We both know you won’t leave until I look at it.”

Clarice sent the casefile and all its new photos to Graham through the food carrier. He opened the file and immediately began rearranging its contents, assembling it in a new order. From his cage, Lecter spoke again.

“Where was the last body found, if I may ask?”

“West Virginia,” she said.

“Another full-figured young woman?”

“Yes.”

“And what of the object in her throat, Agent Starling? What did you make of that?”

Clarice paused. “How did you know about that?”

“I didn’t for sure until just now. So thank you for that.” Lecter smiled. “What was it?”

“A chrysalis,” Graham answered for her. His eyes never left the latest crime scene photos as he held them up to the light. “From a moth, to be specific. Moths, butterflies – they represent change. Transformation. He wants to shed his skin and become something new.”

“His _skins_ , my love, as in more than one,” Lecter said to his spouse. “The number of victims suggests he may see his good work as a series of molts. Between birth and death man may briefly touch understanding, just as this killer comes to better understand himself through each change he undergoes.”

The realization came on hot and fast. “He’s wearing the skins,” Clarice said.

“Hence the larger proportions of his victims. He starves them down for a better fit,” said Lecter. “He’s making himself a woman-suit out of real women. Now why do you think he would do a thing like this?”

“ _He_ isn’t making a woman-suit, because _he_ isn’t a _he_.” Graham held the casefile up, pressing photos of each of the victims against the glass. “Buffalo Bill was misgendered. This is a woman. That’s why you won’t catch her – the profile doesn’t account for what she does.”

Clarice shook her head. “That doesn’t make sense. Statistically female serial killers are rare. They’re often more passive – poisonings, asphyxiations. They target people they know, like family or neighbors. Unless Buffalo Bill’s trying to _become_ a woman – ”

“No. She isn’t a man becoming a woman, because she’s always been a woman. She’s becoming a better woman – the perfect woman. Look at her victims. Young, smooth skin, no scars. She thinks they’re perfect – she covets what they have, what they are. She wants to _be_ perfect.”

“So after Lecter saw her ten years ago, she transitioned?”

“She became comfortable with herself. That’s when she figured out what she wanted with the skin.” He shuffled through the pictures again, snapshots of skinned backs and chests. “The placement of these incisions, the shape – they mimic sewing patterns. She’s piecing her skin together, one body at a time. And she won’t stop until she’s completed it.”

“Then how do we catch her?”

“Look for someone with scars or a disfigurement, likely result from physical abuse or childhood injury. Think burn victims, car crash survivors. Check into hospitals and doctors that specialize in hormone replacement therapy. She might not be getting her hormones through legal channels, but she likely saw a doctor in the beginning. There should be records somewhere.”

Thrill began to climb Clarice’s back in a warm wave. She reached for her phone and turned around to walk back up the corridor, to call Crawford’s office. Before she could get away, Lecter called after her.

“Agent Starling, before you go, may I ask one more question?”

She stopped and looked to Lecter. As she did, Graham disappeared from view, retreating into the shadows.

“What is it, doctor?”

“I have some information that might interest you, but I’d like to know something else about you first. Quid pro quo, as they say.”

“Show me yours, and I’ll show you mine?”

Lecter smirked. “Something like that.”

“I already told you about myself.”

“Intimate confessions build trust. I would like to trust you, just as I would like for you to trust me. Have I yet given you reason to doubt my sincerity?”

Clarice took the moment to consider her answer, then said, “What do you want to know?”

“After your parents died, what happened to you?”

“I was sent to live with my mother’s cousin and her husband. They had a ranch.”

“What kind of ranch?”

“Sheep and horses.”

“Were you happy there?”

“That’s three questions, doctor,” she said, with a certain aplomb.

“What I have to say is worth three questions. Please do me a kindness and answer, Agent Starling.”

“They were good people. They took care of me, the best they could.”

“So a lonely girl was sent off to tend to the lambs, far from the only home and family she ever knew,” Lecter said. “And they wonder how she grew up to gaze on things with such great teeth.”

“The better to eat me with, doctor,” Clarice replied. “Quid pro quo.”

“My husband knows your killer’s name,” said Lecter brightly. “Now run along to Uncle Jack and see if he isn’t too busy to speak with us after all.”

Clarice turned to Graham’s cage, but only saw darkness.

IV.

Crawford sat silently behind his desk, where Clarice’s report laid unopened. Clarice didn’t sit across from him. Instead she stood by the door, her coat over her arm, unsure of what she was supposed to say. The giddy, almost euphoric feeling that Lecter’s proposition put in her stomach carried her from the hospital and straight to Quantico. It buoyed her as she walked down the hall to Crawford’s office, where it dissipated at first sight of his grim expression.

Then, as quickly as her ambition had reared its zealous head, it crept back into the too-small box where she kept it.

“What do you think, sir?”

“Tell me again what was said,” he responded, slowly and firmly. “Exactly as it was said.”

“Lecter said that Graham knows the name of my killer, and that I need to see if you would be willing to talk to them now.”

Crawford nodded. “We’re being played.”

“I think it’s worth considering.”

“It isn’t.”

“He’s offering you Graham. You said that’s who you needed on this case.”

“Hannibal Lecter is a liar and a psychopath. He does nothing altruistically, Starling. This is him having his fun. _Do not_ fall for the game.”

“Graham has been asking to meet with you since the start, sir. He won’t say why, but I think this is Lecter’s way of forcing our hand.”

“ _My_ hand,” Crawford corrected her sternly. “This is their way of forcing _my_ hand. Because this is my investigation, and you represent my office. Do not forget where you stand.”

Clarice’s face felt hot. She bit down hard on the angry, ugly thing that leapt to mind. “You sent me in there to get you insight, sir. I did that, even when you lied to me. You told me to tell you whenever something plucks at me – now Lecter’s offering you a name. And I got to tell you, sir, this is plucking at me real hard.”

He leveled her a steady look, then said, “The last time I saw Will Graham, he tried to gut me with a carving knife, then left me with a mark so I wouldn’t forget it.” A gesture at the scar beside his mouth confirmed what Lecter said: _left him with a smile_. “Lecter’s using you to get to me, so Graham can get to me. That’s all.”

“The report said Lecter attacked you.”

“I lied,” Crawford said. “I had my reasons. I still have my reasons. You need to trust that.”

She swallowed. “Sir, I don’t know Lecter and Graham like you do, but Lecter knows far more about this case than he’s willing to admit on our terms. He’s putting Graham out there as a prize, because he knows it’s personal to you. I can’t see what the plan is yet, but if you don’t at least consider the offer, more women will die.”

“More women will die, Starling, because Buffalo Bill killed them. And Lecter will still be sitting in a cage, watching.”

“Maybe you can live with that, sir, but I don’t think I can.”

Crawford sat silent. As he opened his mouth to speak, his office line rang. Then Clarice’s phone buzzed in her purse. They answered at the same time.

“Clarice,” said Ardelia breathlessly. “Where are you?”

“I’m meeting with Crawford.”

“Turn on the news.”

“Why? What’s going on?”

“Hang up and check your news feed, right now.”

Clarice did as she was told. She pulled up her news app and was met with a live video feed out of Memphis, Tennessee. There Junior Senator Ruth Martin held a press conference. On the bottom of the screen, the news ticker spewed updates on the ongoing investigation into the disappearance of Martin’s daughter, Catherine.

“I’m speaking now to the person who is holding my daughter. You have the power to let my daughter go unharmed. Her name is Catherine.”

Photographs of Catherine Baker Martin slowly crossed the screen in a montage of dance recitals, Christmas mornings, and school pictures. Catherine, at the ages of five, ten, and fifteen. Finally, a picture of her at her college graduation, as a vibrant young woman accepting her degree. The ticker told of how she was abducted from her apartment and her clothes were found on the roadway three hours later, slit up the back.

“She’s a very kind and understanding girl. If you spoke to her, you would see that. You have the power to treat Catherine better than the world has treated you,” said Ruth Martin. Press cameras flashed to light up her face, where tears pearled in the corners of her eyes and threatened to ruin her makeup. “You can show the world that you’re compassionate as well as strong. Her name is Catherine. Please return her to me.”

It was smart. Saying Catherine’s name over and over – putting a name to the skin. It would make Catherine more than just material. Harder to tear apart, piece by piece.

“Son of a bitch.” Crawford slammed down the receiver. “Chilton’s gone behind our backs with Lecter’s offer – now Martin’s office wants Graham.”

V.

Of all the rooms in Hannibal’s memory palace, there was one he often revisited. It was one of the rooms he returned to alone; Will couldn’t suffer it anymore, and he understood that. The pain was like a spear in Will’s side, stuck between the ribs to dig into him in quiet moments. Pain didn’t stop Hannibal, nor did guilt or loss. These aches served to remind him, every day, of what was at stake if they failed.

If he failed.

The day was captured in planes of light and sound. They took the shape of a little house on the edge of woodlands in the Belgian countryside. It was the kind of house with a wide porch and land for dogs. Will had always wanted a house like this, behind miles of solitude and tall trees, to raise their daughter. Hannibal regretted that he was only able to give it to him once they were on the run, when Jack Crawford and the FBI caught up with them again.

What came next, as Hannibal walked through his mental reconstruction, was one of his greatest failures. Will never should have been left to defend them with Emilia in his arms. He never should have been forced to make that decision, slicing Jack across the gut and the face to hold him back. He never should have taken the bullet, and shielded Emilia with his own body before she was snatched away. He never should have had to watch her disappear – crying, afraid, and calling for her fathers.

Emilia was two years old when Hannibal saw her last. She already looked so much like Will, with her dark curls and light eyes. She had his smile, too. Their daughter would now be three, stolen out of her father’s arms and given to other parents. Some other, undeserving family, who couldn’t appreciate the gift they had been given, nor the hell they brought to their door in accepting her.

Because he would bring that hell himself. He promised Will that he would. To the false family, to Jack Crawford, and to everyone that helped hide Emilia away.

That was what gave Hannibal peace above all else.


	6. The Wolf

I.

Catherine Baker Martin awoke seventeen feet below the cellar of Jessica Grant’s house, and saw only darkness. She smelled warm earth and wet concrete. Vertigo took away what strength she had regained in consciousness as the floor – loose, gritty, unsure – felt like water or sand under her feet. Her fingers searched for solid ground, anything to provide tactile context or a sense of comfort in the dark.

Her breathing was the only sound she could discern, rabbit-fast in her chest. Fear pressed it out of her in ragged gasps, weighing down on her breastplate. Something itched at her skin – a quilted jumpsuit, clean and smelling of fabric softener against her body, which was naked underneath. Her clothes were gone and her head throbbed, and nothing felt real anymore. Instead the world felt soft and black and terrifying, and her fingers found only bare concrete closing in around her.

A noise above her – or was it her heart? – caught her attention. Footsteps trailing across wood somewhere overhead, followed by running water in creaky pipes. A dog barked as its clawed feet scratched at linoleum tile. There was a clicking sound, then the heavy clunk of the basement trap door and a faint yellow glow. It sliced of cone of light through the blackness high above Catherine.

“My family will pay!” The voice that crawled out of Catherine quaked violently. She didn’t realize how hard she had been crying until she stuttered on her words. “Whatever you want they’ll pay it, I swear! Just let me go! Let me go, please!”

People had sat her down and explained how these sorts of things worked when her mother first ran for office. The risks of kidnapping for ransom, what to do, and how to act if the statistically unlikely – but entirely plausible – event should occur. Catherine tried to remember what the expert her mother hired had said, when she was fourteen and concerned with other, more concrete matters. Kidnappers far preferred money to blood on their hands and bodies to dispose of. She had to be quiet and compliant, and not give her captors a reason to do something stupid. She tried to remember that.

A shadow fell over the well. Catherine wiped away the tears that obscured her vision and hiccupped. Above her stood the woman from the parking lot, her little white dog in her arms.

“Please!” Catherine cried. “They’ll do whatever you want! Just let me go!”

“Look at that, my silly-billy,” Jessica Grant sing-songed. “It’s finally awake.”

Catherine Baker Martin screamed, but no one heard her.

II.

Clarice Starling was used to silence. She was used to the darkness inside the cells by now, as well, troubling though it was. It made her mindful of the sounds of breathing, or the way fabric rubbed against skin. The creatures were still today – no taunting, no riddles, no backhanded compliments. Instead, she stood in her spotlight between Lecter and Graham’s cages, and felt sharply alone with her thoughts.

This was now her second time making this plea, and so far it was as successful as the last.

In the stark absence of sound, constructed as it was by their little ball of quiet, she thought she might have missed the routine. Surely it was the unease talking, and not the increasingly familiar thrill that came of their conversations. Surely she wanted to push the case forward, and wasn’t listening for breathing in the dark. That wasn’t a possibility she wanted to entertain.

Silence made time tick by molasses-slow. When no acknowledgment came, Clarice took a deep breath and squared herself up.

“As you know, Senator Martin’s office has reached out to the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office to try to gain any insight you could offer to help find Catherine Martin. I’ve been instructed by Jack Crawford to go over the terms of their proposal with you. Again.”

“Vengeance is said to be the daughter of silence,” said Lecter from a distance. “A fitting thing on a day so concerned with daughters. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“I’m not sure we’re discussing vengeance here, Dr. Lecter, so much as right and wrong?”

“Is it wrong for our skinner to do what she deems necessary to find peace in her life? Is it wrong for my beloved to use his insight to destroy that peace?”

Clarice sighed, and realized she was out of place in their manufactured silence. “Do you still want to pretend you’re not dangling your husband in front of Crawford like a prize?”

“You offend me, Agent Starling,” Lecter said. His voice was firm, but without immediate venom. “The way you tell it, I don’t have his best interests in mind, when caring for my family is my utmost concern.”

“I trust you, doctor. I think we both want the same thing here.”

“Do we now?” A pause. “Tell me of right and wrong then, Agent Starling. Do you think it’s right that one daughter should be privileged over another, when each of these women face the same fate?”

“Senator Martin’s just doing what she can to get her daughter back. I think any parent would do the same.”

“I think we would agree. But Jack Crawford is still sending an agent-in-training to do his bidding, and this offends me, too. My husband has repeatedly asked for Crawford’s presence, and I’m afraid even I can’t predict what he’ll do when faced with such an affront.”

Talking in circles, dodging the topic at hand. The act chapped at Clarice, as Graham’s enduring silence did. After a moment with her swimming thoughts, Clarice approached his cage and said, “Will. You and I both know the clock started running down the moment Catherine Martin was abducted. She only has a week, maybe ten days at most, and then she’s dead like all the rest. I don’t know if you can live with that, but I know I can’t.”

“You talk a lot about what you can and can’t live with, Agent Starling.” Graham’s words rose out of the dark in a brittle little voice. It didn’t sound scripted; it was vulnerable in a way she hadn’t heard before. “I don’t think you could stand to know what I’ve been living with, by the sound of it.”

“Tell me,” she said. “See if I can take it.”

“Have you ever had children?”

“No.”

“Then you can’t take it.”

Clarice sighed again. “What would it take to get you to look at the proposal?”

“Jack Crawford, in person. Not by proxy or messenger.”

“Why do you need to see him?”

“Bring him here, or you can tell Senator Martin to begin funeral arrangements.”

A sudden, bright anger brought Clarice’s hand up to slam the glass barrier. The thud was futile, but satisfying. “You don’t mean that.”

“Try me, and find out for yourself.”

“You gain nothing from lying to me – about Crawford, or about this case.”

“Has it occurred to you that I might be the only one who hasn’t been lying?” When she didn’t respond, his voice dipped into a lower, more complacent register. “Evidently it has.”

She considered her next words, and just how they could get her into trouble if she wasn’t cautious. “Is that concern for me, or for yourself?”

Graham said nothing else. Despite herself, Clarice left the silent ward angry, her footfalls marking her retreat.

III.

“You just couldn’t help yourself, could you?”

Jack Crawford refused to sit in the offered chair across from Frederick Chilton. Behind his sprawling desk, Chilton had forgone all pleasantries in favor of a more malicious disposition, leaning back in his throne-line chair, a hand resting on his cane. Clarice remained by the door and took comfort in the distance between them all. By the time Crawford arrived at the hospital, her anger had faded, if only in appearance.

“What I did was reach out to Senator Martin and the Memphis field office with relevant information about her daughter’s disappearance,” Chilton said coolly. “Information you were willing to ignore while that poor girl languishes in some lunatic’s spider-hole. I’m merely doing what my conscience compels me to do.”

“Does your conscience compel you to bargain for guaranteed access to Buffalo Bill upon capture?” asked Crawford. “Or is that just a convenient windfall for interfering with an ongoing investigation?”

“Please, Jack. This poor creature has suffered at the hands of the media already. At least give her a more suitable moniker. I’m thinking Calamity Jane has a nice ring to it, if we’re sold on the western theme.”

Chilton smiled. Crawford practically snarled.

“Cut the crap. We all know we’re being played, and you’ve sold the senator a bill of goods to secure your next book deal.”

“All I did was sell the bill of goods Lecter offered. Your trainee and I have both attempted to meet with Graham on the senator’s terms and he won’t budge. He’ll only speak to you.”

“Is the busted face part of how you tried to get him to budge, Dr. Chilton?” Clarice asked. “Or is that the cost of being your patient?”

“Ms. Starling, Will Graham told you that little bruise was the result of attacking a staff member. We can do without the theatrics.” Dismissive, Chilton turned his attention back to Crawford. “Need I remind you the last time Graham and I saw one another socially, he set me up to be maimed and burned alive? At your request, no less, if I do recall correctly.”

Crawford regarded Chilton steadily. Clarice resumed her hostile silence. For it all, Chilton’s smile turned dark.

“You know, it took 34 surgical procedures before I was fit to resume a normal life. While Graham and Lecter were gallivanting across Europe on their honeymoon, I was having my skin replaced in piecemeal. 34 surgeries, all to put me back in this chair, and make sure neither of them obliterate any more lives than they already have. I would say, at the very least, I’m owed what the good senator is proposing. And if I happen to write another book after this case, I’m sure the Bureau will still rest easy.”

“You’ll only get your end of the deal if Graham can make good on Lecter’s,” said Crawford. “You can’t guarantee that.”

“Lecter’s handing you Will Graham, all giftwrapped and righteous – which is just how you like him. So I suggest you do us all a favor and accept that gift so we can all give Senator Martin what she wants in return. Because, otherwise, her precious daughter will be washing up in a river within the week. I’m sure none of us want that blood on our hands, Crawford. Least of all you.”

Then Crawford, full of fire and brimstone, finally yielded.

IV.

Clarice found Crawford had stipulations of his own in meeting with Will Graham. He wanted to meet with Graham alone, outside of his cell and without recording devices. No Hannibal Lecter stalking in the shadows, no Dr. Chilton listening in. Clarice kept quiet about that as Graham was wheeled into the visitor’s room on a hand truck, muzzled and restrained. The sight was unnerving: bound in a straightjacket, his face obscured by a heavy plastic face mask. Two orderlies began the meticulous process of unstrapping him and leading him to the cage where he remained shackled at the wrists.

She and Crawford stood at a safe space of ten feet, well out of arm’s length should Graham try to attack them. The feral look Graham leveled at Crawford gave Clarice pause, and she wondered if he might. Gone was the man she watched pace his cell, with his measured stare and careful, controlled choice of words. He was replaced by someone who looked a size smaller and wet in the eyes, with a barely restrained rage tensing in the hands that gripped the bars of his cage.

Beside her, Crawford betrayed nothing. Clarice didn’t know what to make of that, either.

“Hello, Jack,” said Graham.

“Hello, Will,” said Crawford.

Graham stared Crawford down for a long moment. Clarice’s stomach tightened. Crawford decided to break the silence.

“Senator Martin’s office is throwing its weight around to have you flown into Memphis in the morning. She’s willing to work with the U.S. Attorney’s Office to expand your privileges in exchange for any information or insight you might have. So long as Catherine Martin’s recovered alive.”

“Having me look at the abduction site won’t tell me anything more than Memphis PD already knows.”

“I know. Chilton seems to have convinced Martin otherwise. And none of this can happen until I have your compliance in writing.”

“I don’t care what the senator’s offering. I won’t utter one word about this killer, or her identity, until I’ve arrived in Memphis and met with agents of the FBI field office.”

“Why?”

“To make sure I have your undivided attention.”

“You have it now. What are your terms?”

“Our terms.”

“Ah. _Our_ _terms_.” Crawford’s smirk was bitter and jagged. “So there it is.”

“There it is,” Graham said. “I want guaranteed transfer to another facility for the both of us, effective immediately.”

“Transfer isn’t on the table. Maybe for you, provided you’re on the level, but not for Lecter.”

“He and I have been charged with the same crimes and are receiving the same punishment. When we’re convicted, I imagine that will continue. I just want to see that it does.”

“Chilton won’t sign off on that.”

“Chilton’s renewed enthusiasm for hospital administration has more to do with taking his seven pounds out of our backs than it does patient welfare.”

“If I were him, I can’t say I wouldn’t do the same.” A pause then, as Crawford seemed to think better of that particular train of thought. “I’ll see what can be done. But I’m sure you didn’t have me come all the way down here just to tell me that.”

Graham took a deep breath, visibly steadying himself. He gripped the bars tighter. “Where is Emilia?”

Crawford steadied himself, too. “Emilia Strand went missing in Belgium last year. She hasn’t been seen since. That’s all anybody knows about her. That’s all anyone will ever know about her. I would have thought it would’ve been of some comfort to you knowing that.”

Graham’s laugh was tremulous and uneven. “ _A comfort_? I should be comforted by the fact you ripped her from my arms and gave her to strangers? What you did wasn’t mercy, Jack – it was kidnapping.”

It was then Clarice realized where she stood, outside the hot bubble of pain that blossomed in the empty space between Jack Crawford and Will Graham. This was where she had always been: held just beyond the truth. The awareness made her feel used-up, as cheap as she had been made to feel the first time she walked into the maximum security ward and learned she had been lied to.

Crawford took deliberate steps toward the cage. “It was a longshot, you know. Just an anonymous tip that came across my desk. After all, you and Hannibal had been gone for years, without so much as a peep – but I knew it was you. I _knew_. Then I saw you that day, with that beautiful little girl on your hip, and part of me hoped I wasn’t seeing it. Part of me hoped that Hannibal had stolen you away, locked you in a cage – that all of this was some kind of captor-bonding.”

“You would rather see me beaten and coerced than admit that I had fallen in love with him?”

“Yes,” Crawford said. “I would. Then at least you could’ve been salvaged.”

Graham’s voice dipped venomously, “You still think I’m yours to salvage.”

“No, but you were my friend. Once.”

“I wasn’t your friend. I was a skillset at your disposal. You didn’t care about what I did, or who I killed, as long as I did it in the name of your cause.”

“That was never true.”

“Wasn’t it? It never offended you what we monsters did in the dark – it only offended you to know that we’ve been breeding.”

Crawford stood silent, then asked, “She was your little girl, wasn’t she?”

Graham nodded. “She was.”

“After everything he did to you – after he tried to kill your family – you still gave him your child?”

Graham looked to Clarice then, acknowledging her. Bringing her in – making her a part of it.

“Did he tell you this is why he wouldn’t see me? And why he didn’t want to be recorded?”

“This has nothing to do with Starling,” Crawford said sharply. “This is between us.”

“You want her to do your dirty work, Jack. The least you can do is tell her it’s because you didn’t want anyone to know you kidnapped our baby.”

“You took off with a killer – you _became_ a killer, Will. What kind of life would your daughter have had with you and Hannibal as her fathers? With everyone knowing what she was? So, yes, I made a choice. I may have broken the law, but I wouldn’t hesitate to do it again. Not if it saves her from you.”

“I was never yours to save – neither was Emilia.”

Crawford shook his head. With a voice softened by remorse, he said, “I was told she was taken in by a family in Livingston, Montana. I never met them, but they sounded like good people.”

“What is her name?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

“I had an old acquaintance who worked in child welfare. She took your daughter stateside after your arrest and had her listed as a Jane Doe to be placed in foster care. That’s all I know.” Another pause. Finally, Crawford asked, “Are we done here?”

The feral smile wavered on Graham’s face. “With this? Yes. But you and I will never be done.”

The bubble of hurt feelings that had swallowed up the visitor’s room suddenly burst. Crawford turned to stride out without another word. Graham shut down, retreating to the back of the cage. Clarice watched him disappear behind blank affect, once again left to silence as the heavy door slammed shut behind Crawford.

Silence, and the nauseating feeling that all of this was for nothing.

V.

A solitary wolf traveled through the snow, moving beneath the pale silver moonlight piercing the spaces between cold-stripped trees. She was a great, gray beast, made of sturdy musculature and gleaming teeth. Her eyes were black under the full moon above, the amber irises gone deep and dark as they scanned the forest ahead. Clarice knew this scene well.

Ahead, a stag galloped away. It was slim and agile thing, darting amid the thicket of brush on sprightly hooves. The wolf stalked the stag by the tracks it left in the snow-cover and the thrum of its blood pumping beneath the skin. Coming to a ravine, the stag came to a lurching halt. The stag snorted and whinnied, its hot breath streaming from its nostrils as it gathered itself away from the edge. But it was too late.

Lunging, the wolf attacked the stag. She sank her teeth into the stag’s neck and dragged it down into the snow. Blood splattered across the white powder in spots like shiny black pearls, then sank deep into the snow-cover. The wolf tore at the flesh as the stag struggled and thrashed, separating fur from skin and meat from bone. The stag then screamed in a loud, guttural noise, but there was nothing there to listen but the wolf at its throat.

Before Clarice woke, she saw herself in the snow with blood in her teeth. She sat upright in bed, terrified and trembling, as the sounds of animal death faded away behind her eyes. The room spun before it slowly began to settle. When it did, Clarice found herself perched on the edge of the bed and Ardelia’s hands on her back, holding her steady.

“What is it?” Ardelia’s voice was cottoned by sleep as she rubbed soothing circles between Clarice’s shoulder blades. “Are you okay?”

Clarice shook her head. She tasted copper on the back of her tongue and scrubbed the sleep from her eyes. “Just a nightmare. It’s nothing.”

“Is it the case?”

“I don’t know.”

Clarice hadn’t told Ardelia about what happened at the hospital. She hadn’t told anyone about Emilia Strand, or the broken, wrathful look in Graham’s eyes when he spoke of her. What could she say? Who would she tell? It was her and Graham’s word against Crawford’s; the thought of accusing him made her feel sick with herself, even if it was true.

Even if there was a baby in Livingston, Montana, who was hidden away where her parents could never find her. Catherine Baker Martin took precedence over that. She had to.

Sighing, Ardelia pressed her forehead to Clarice’s bare shoulder. “Okay, I know I was supportive of this whole adventure at first, but maybe it’s time to stop.”

“I can’t,” Clarice said. _“I won’t,”_ she meant to say.

“I don’t want to put anything else on your mind, but…”

“That’s never stopped you before.”

She knew what was coming next. Ardelia made the Law Review at University of Maryland while working a night job. Her academic standing at the academy was number two in the class, and she made it look easy while Clarice crammed until four o’clock in the morning. Ardelia appreciated academics, just as she appreciated they didn’t come as easily to everybody else.

“You’re supposed to take the Criminal Code exam tomorrow, and the PE test in two days. I know you work hard and you make good grades, okay? But Crawford knows you could get recycled if he’s not careful. You’re missing classes to chase around psychopaths on his time and you could lose everything because of it.”

“I can get a makeup on the Code exam,” Clarice said. “And I’ll be back from Memphis in time for the PE test. I can make it work.”

“You shouldn’t have to.”

“This is what I signed up for.”

“Gratitude’s got a short shelf-life, Clarice,” said Ardelia. “Make sure Crawford says _no recycle_ – he owes you that much.”

After a moment, Clarice sighed. Then she took Ardelia by a lithe hand and pressed a kiss to its palm. “I won’t let it get too far.”

“Good. Besides, I don’t want to have to get a new roommate.”

Clarice chuckled. “Thanks for your concern.”

“You’re welcome.”

VI.

Warm sunlight spilled through the windows of Hannibal’s memory palace to reconstruct their study in Paris. Shafts of clean afternoon sun cut stark shadows from the silhouettes of the harpsichord and the two armchairs by the fireplace. Hannibal awaited Will’s return in silent reflection at the opened veranda doors, where he recalled the street below in vivid detail. His suit was bespoke, gray plaid with a black waistcoat and tie. It was a favorite of Will’s, out of the dozens of suits that occupied Hannibal’s side of the closet. That was an inconsequential detail.

Will, hands in his trouser pockets, came to stand before the fireplace opposite of the veranda. He waited for the orderlies’ footsteps to withdraw down the corridor before he spoke.

“I assume the conversation was fruitful,” Hannibal said first. “Seeing as you haven’t maimed anyone.”

“It was a polite conversation,” Will answered. “I was on my best behavior – all things considered.”

“Pity.”

“You sound disappointed.”

“Never by you, my love.”

“In any case, I’m being flown out in the morning. Chilton was so smug I could practically hear it.”

“And Crawford?”

“Our daughter is in Livingston, Montana. I was assured she was taken in by a _good family_.”

“I wonder whose standards this was measured by,” Hannibal said. “What has this false family named her?”

Will shook his head. “Crawford didn’t know – or pretended not to know. It doesn’t make much difference. We’ll find her.”

“Names are powerful things. They connect us to our families, and those connections define how we engage with the world beyond ourselves.”

“Crawford can’t erase Emilia by changing her name.”

“No, but he can erase her lineage, and her past. Our family would die with us without a child to live on in our absence. That would serve his ends just as well.” Hannibal paused. He looked to Will across the hall, outlined as he was by the pool of light against the glass. “You once told me that we didn’t kill families, Will. Do you still wish to hold true to these moral platitudes?”

"Do you?"

Hannibal didn't have to answer. Will nodded knowingly.

“Our family was killed when our daughter was taken from us. I’m eager to return the favor.” Will pressed his lips together to wet them, then said, “The trainee is sympathetic, just as you said. She might be more helpful to us than I gave her credit for.”

“You appear to her as a reflection of the real danger that surrounds her, and the treachery. Now she sees what Crawford is capable of and has been alienated from him for it. The sooner that endears her to your point of view, the better.”

“I think she prefers seeing me as wounded. Makes that reflection easier to choke down.”

“Of course. You have been wounded.”

“Yes, but I’m also not as pleasant to be around as you are.” Humor tugged at Will’s mouth, then fell away. “Jack Crawford earned a seat at our table, along with everyone else who helped him hide Emilia from us. I have no doubts or regrets about what comes next.”

“I would never doubt you, or your commitment to our family, Will,” Hannibal said. “You gave me your child and your hand – those are promises forged in the iron of your blood. Without them, our family would have remained dead.”

“I’m not looking for another resurrection.”

“This will be our last resurrection, in this life or the next. I’ll come for you once you’ve gone, and we’ll collect our daughter together. There will be no one left to stop us again – that was the vow that I made to you.”

“Till death do us part?” asked Will.

“Yes,” Hannibal said. “And only if they can manage to kill us will we be apart.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just in case it wasn't clear: as stated in Pioneer to the Falls, Strand was the assumed name Will and Hannibal were living under in Paris. Since Emilia was born in France and is a French citizen, her legal surname is Strand. However, in our hearts and minds her full name is Emilia Lecter-Graham.


	7. The Kiss

I.

Hours passed in water dripping and floorboards creaking somewhere in the dark. Sunshine didn’t penetrate the basement with its boarded windows, blocking the measure of sun or moon, day or night. Catherine sat at the bottom of the well and tried to keep track of time by any means she could. Her knees under her chin and her arms locking them in place, she wept until she ran out of tears. Then she hiccupped until her throat went ragged and she was left with only silence.

Hunger left Catherine weak and dizzy. She couldn’t remember the last time she ate. It must have been the day – no, the night, it was night – when she was taken. All she had in the well was a jug of water and a waste bucket in the corner, both attached to ropes. Her captor occasionally came to pull up the bucket and jug, replacing the water and dumping the waste. Catherine never knew when she was coming back, so she had to make the water last as long as she could.

The tell-tale sounds of movement upstairs meant Catherine was no longer alone. She flinched as the trap door opened with a heavy clank. A blazing light came on at the mouth of the well. Catherine shielded her eyes with her hand to let them adjust, then found a floodlight dangled from the edge and suspended by an extension cord. Between her fingers, she saw Jessica Grant looming large overhead, with her little white dog barking and wriggling excitedly at her feet.

Music played upstairs; the melody flowed through the opened space made by the trap door. It plucked faint chords that vibrated in the well and through Catherine’s fingertips as she braced herself against it. Jessica hummed along musically in rising notes. She lowered a bucket of warm, soapy water to the well’s bottom.

Catherine licked her chapped lips and took a deep breath. “If you let me talk to my family, I can get you whatever you want. My mother’s a senator. I have her private office number. I can get you anything you want, I swear.”

Jessica let the bucket drop with a splash, then threw a towel down.

“Wash yourself.”

“My mother’s number is 202 — ”

“Take it off and wash yourself all over, or you’ll get the hose.” The dog barked, and to it, Jessica said, “Yes it will, baby! It’ll get the hose! Won’t that be fun?”

Catherine swallowed. “Please, I can help you.”

Sighing, Jessica tapped two long, pink nails against her chin. Then she disappeared from the mouth of the well. A moment later, something came down past the light – a garden hose. It sputtered and sprayed a single icy stream of water in warning.

“Wash yourself. All over.”

Catherine felt like crying as she looked into the bucket, finding a wash cloth and a tube of expensive skin cream. She sucked that feeling away and slipped off the quilted jumpsuit, reaching for the cloth. Hunched over to shield her nudity, she washed herself as quickly as she could manage with a shaking hand. The cold air made her skin pimple in gooseflesh as it hit her all over, an intense reminder of her own helplessness.

“Now, dry off,” Jessica sing-songed from somewhere beyond the well’s mouth. “Rub the cream all over yourself. Don’t be stingy, because I’ll know if you do.”

The cream was warm from the bath water, but oily to Catherine’s skin as she pulled quilted suit back on. She took a deep breath. The bucket was pulled up and away.

“My mother will pay for me,” she tried again. “No questions asked. All you have to do is – ”

The floodlight flickered off with a snap of the plastic switch. Then the trap door slammed shut with a thud. Left in the dark, Catherine’s rage and fear bubbled over into a soft, muffled whimper.

II.

That morning at the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, Dr. Frederick Chilton strode into the maximum security ward with a bounce in his step. Clarice Starling didn’t trust it in the least as she trailed behind him. Crawford had sent her in his stead; he was in meetings with Martin’s representatives and wanted her to ensure that the transfer happened without incident. He didn’t trust Chilton not to find a way to make a mess of things. She certainly shared his sentiment.

As Clarice walked after Chilton, Barney followed with two orderlies, Hart and Liu. They were armed respectively with the hand truck and restraints. Chilton stopped at the desk and asked Alonzo to turn on the lights in the cells at the end of the corridor. He watched harsh fluorescence flood the ward with a certain, visible satisfaction before he made the trek down to stand between Lecter and Graham’s cells.

“Good morning, gentlemen. I trust you slept well.”

Lecter stood in the center of his cell with his hands folded behind his back. Graham stood at the glass to observe Chilton with a cold, steady gaze. Each of them avoided Clarice’s eyes. Graham had made himself vulnerable to her, in the cage in front of Crawford. By extension, that made Lecter vulnerable, exposing the wounds they each carried at the loss of their child. Perhaps this was their way of recouping the ground they forfeited, she thought. Hiding their blind spots.

Whatever the game being played, Chilton seemed ignorant of its rules. Barney and the other orderlies stood at the ready as Chilton held up the copy of Senator Martin’s offer in print.

“I need you to sign the terms of your agreement with the senator before I can legally release you to the Tennessee State Troopers,” Chilton said, then dropped it into the food carrier with a pen. “This is what you get: if you identify the woman that abducted Catherine Martin, you’ll be installed in Brushy Mountain State Prison in Tennessee, far out of the reach of Maryland authorities. Name her, and you can go at once. Meanwhile, you’ll speak only through me. I alone publish a professional account of this case. Lecter will publish nothing, nor will he attempt to refute me publicly. You won’t speak to anyone about this case, and I alone have exclusive access to any material from Catherine Martin, should she be saved.”

Graham leveled Chilton a hard look, then opened the food carrier. He read through the document, took up the pen, and signed his name. Finished, he passed it back.

“You should be thrilled, Frederick. Soon you’ll have everything you need for your next bestseller, and you won’t even have to fumble through our heads to get it.”

“Oh, I’ve had my fill of fumbling where you two are concerned,” Chilton said merrily. “Watching you paw at the glass and whisper sweet nothings at one another lost its novelty very quickly.”

“I never would have pegged you for the voyeur, Frederick,” said Lecter. “However, I do hope you disposed of the tapes when you were finished with them.”

Lecter looked at Clarice, then smirked. Chilton ignored it altogether and signaled to Barney, who then instructed Hart and Liu to enter Graham’s cell. Graham moved to the back wall to let them in without protest, yielding to the straightjacket. Clarice turned to Chilton.

“And what about Lecter?”

“Oh, Lecter will remain here in my care, until further notice.”

The air in the ward changed. Graham’s expression grew dark as the orderlies began to strap him to the hand truck. “That’s not what we agreed to.”

“We didn’t agree to anything,” Chilton reminded him. “Senator Martin did – and it seems her office didn’t know about your request to have your husband transferred. I suppose it didn’t make it into the paperwork. A damned pitiable oversight.”

“Is this really necessary, Dr. Chilton?” asked Clarice.

“Necessary? No. But, my, if it isn’t just a bit satisfying.”

“Will bargained for the both of us,” said Lecter. “You have nothing to gain from keeping me here.”

Chilton turned to Lecter with a spiteful humor. “Oh, but I do. You see, I know all about the game you were playing with Dr. Bloom – having your hubby bite the orderlies and sneak off to play in your cell. Just as I know I couldn’t separate you two without further endangering the staff, because you just can’t function unless you’re within petting distance. But now, I have nothing to worry about with you on opposite sides of the country.”

Graham struggled to wrench himself free of his restraints as the orderlies held him still. Lecter watched from his cage, stoic and silent, poised at the glass as though awaiting the chance to act. To strike. Angered at the entire scene, Clarice shook her head.

“Stop.” Looking to Barney, and seeing how miserable he looked, she then asked, “Isn’t there an easier way to do this?”

“Let me say goodbye to him,” Graham said. Ragged, desperate, and the closest to pleading Clarice had ever heard him. “I can’t leave him – I just – just let me say goodbye.”

Chilton and Barney exchanged tense looks, then Chilton conceded with a sigh. Barney told the two orderlies to let Graham off the hand truck. Hart and Liu grabbed him by the straps of the straightjacket, leading him out of his cell to the glass of Lecter’s. Graham and Lecter looked at one another through the barrier, closer than they had been in the year since their arrests. The glass didn’t deter them as they leaned their foreheads to it, closing their eyes, in an approximation of physical intimacy. Murmuring something in a language unknown to the others in the corridor, their lips met in a kiss through the small circular vent. Softly, tenderly, unbecoming of things with claws and teeth – like people in love did.

Clarice felt sick for it, privy as she was to this small tragedy. She moved back on clicking heels and looked away. It just seemed like the decent thing to do, as strange as it all was to witness. For it, she didn’t see the lock pick Graham passed on the curled tip of his tongue – the straightened paperclip he’d hidden in his mouth before the lights came on – nor did she see Lecter press it to the inside of his cheek. Chilton rolled his eyes at the show, signaling for the orderlies to break it up.

“Yes, this is all very heartrending, but we’re on a schedule.”

As Hart and Liu dragged Graham away, Lecter withdrew to the corner of his cage. He didn’t face Graham while the orderlies strapped him down and put on his mask, eyes dim and dead. The orderlies wheeled Graham out of the ward, with Chilton and Barney following. Left behind, Clarice finally looked back to Lecter’s cage.

And Lecter, inexplicably, smiled.

III.

Dr. Chilton and three clean-looking, well-pressed Tennessee State Troopers stood on the tarmac of Martin State Airport outside Baltimore. They raised their voices to be heard over the din of radio traffic coming from the open door of the nearby airplane, and the ambulance idling beside it. The Trooper Captain, a severe man named Bullock, handed Chilton a pen and a heap of paperwork attached to the clipboard.

“Can’t we do this in the air?” asked Chilton. He signed his name to the transfer documentation in triplicate, and huffed. “I have an interview in Memphis in just over four hours.”

“Sir, we have to complete this documentation at the moment of physical transfer. Those were my orders.”

“Okay,” called the copilot. He finished clamping down the ramp over the airplane steps. “Good to go.”

Chilton passed back the paperwork and pen back, then walked the Troopers over to the ambulance. He opened the hatch doors and the Troopers tensed, as though something was about to leap out. There Will Graham stood upright on his hand truck, muzzled like a rabid dog. Barney rolled him out of the back of the ambulance, then across the tarmac.

“Alright,” Barney said. “This is where we part ways. The boys in Tennessee will take it from here.”

He shouldn’t have said anything. It was just a routine patient transfer, albeit under peculiar circumstances. But after the scene in the ward, he felt compelled to fill those last moments of silence.

“Barney?” Graham’s voice was muffled behind the mask, frayed though it already was.

“Yes?”

“You’ve been decent to us. You didn’t have to be.”

It was the most Graham had ever said to him in a year. Barney didn’t know quite how to take it. So he simply said, “I’m just doing my job.”

“But, still. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Just don’t let my husband scare you after I’m gone.”

“Sure.”

“Goodbye, Barney.”

Barney rolled Graham up the ramp and into the plane. The copilot tied down the hand truck to cargo brackets on the floor. With one last glance, Barney walked back to the tarmac.

“Dr. Chilton, could I talk to you for a minute?”

“Make it brief if you can, Barney. I’m on a schedule.”

“These guys don’t know anything about Graham.” Police were accustomed to criminals. They were inclined to use handcuffs and leg irons; Graham had a knack for getting out of those. Lecter liked to watch, to wait, but Graham was the one to keep an eye on. “They’re going to make mistakes.”

“I have psychiatric orderlies arranged to pick him up on the other side,” Chilton said. “He’s their problem now.”

“You think they’ll treat him alright? You know how he gets, but you just have to leave him alone, let him work it out in his cell. Slapping him around doesn’t work.”

“You know I’d never allow that to happen, Barney.”

The way Chilton smiled when he said that made Barney nervous.

“They better pay attention,” Barney said. “Because he will.”

IV.

When Clarice found Lecter again, he returned to standing in the center of his cell. Eyes closed, hands behind his back, calm as a cat warmed by the afternoon sun. She had gone outside to pace the parking lot until her hands stopped making fists at her sides. Then she started to call Ardelia twice before thinking better of it, and decided to stalk back inside.

Once she had her fill of Lecter’s smug silence, Clarice spoke.

“You know, for a minute there, I bought it. The whispering, the kiss. Everybody else sure fell for it.”

“Am I not bereaved?” Lecter’s eyes were still closed. “Shall I display my grief more overtly? Would it bring you some measure of delight to see me in hysterics?”

She wanted to stay angry. Angry at the game, at being played with whenever she let her guard down. Instead, she shook her head with a chuckle.

“So, what’s the angle? You feed your husband everything you know about the case, and for what? To show Crawford up? To protect Will? Or are you just doing this to amuse yourself?”

After a moment, Lecter opened his eyes, to look at Clarice with the beginnings of amusement. It made itself known in the line of his mouth and the way the skin crinkled at the corners of his eyes.

“Have I offended you, Agent Starling? I would certainly never knowingly cause you such a grievance.”

Clarice stepped close to the glass. “What are you planning?”

Lecter regarded her, then paced away. “When Paris stole Helen away from Sparta, the vengeful Menelaus raised a fleet to lay siege to Troy. As the Greek tribes united under the house of Atreus to destroy the city, Menelaus – mad with rage at Paris’s cuckoldry – could only be subdued by gazing upon Helen’s divine beauty.”

“I suppose you think you’re Paris in this story, Dr. Lecter?”

“Yes. According to Jack Crawford, I am. My beloved chose to make a life and family with me, and Crawford wants to see him punished for that.”

She shook her head again. “Helen was doomed by the gods to suffer at Paris’s side.”

“My husband is as doomed to me as I am to him. I believe most people would call that a marriage.”

“So that’s what you think is going on here, doctor? You’re fated to suffer?”

“The only crime Will is guilty of in Crawford’s eyes is falling in love. For that, he’s waged war on our family. All I did was offer him the plunder he so desperately seeks.”

The confession caught her off guard, and Clarice paused. “I know what happened to your daughter. I’m sorry.”

Lecter’s expression changed by degrees. “Sympathy is a poor substitute for retribution. I have no use for soft feeling.”

“What Crawford did was wrong, but – ”

“He tried to strangle my family while still in its crib. This wasn’t a lapse of judgment or of an infirm mind. This was an act of cruelty, for cruelty’s sake.”

“I understand you’ve been through a loss – ”

“You are an orphan, hiding behind the ill-fitting suit of law enforcement. You know nothing of love or family, Agent Starling, because you’re a scared child chasing after power. Your pity is a trifle. It offends me, as does your false sentiment.”

Her face felt hot as though struck. She swallowed, then said, “I might be the only person who has tried to help you since this whole mess started. But I see now that everyone was right – you two miserable bastards deserve each other.”

Clarice turned to walk away. Ignored, and hating it, Lecter called out after her.

“Aren’t you going to ask why?”

She stopped. She knew she shouldn’t have, but did so anyway. When she looked to his cage, he stepped forward to the glass.

“For all the scars we’ve carved into one another – and for the children I have taken from him – my beloved still came back to me. Our daughter is more than a child, Agent Starling. She is the miracle of light and breath that my beloved gave me to protect, beyond even the specter of death and our crueler natures. And I will keep that promise – for her.”

Clarice sighed. “You really do love them.”

“Even beasts love their families,” Lecter said. “Are you going to stop me?”

“What?”

“It’s a simple question – will you try to stop me, or won’t you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do. You knew before you walked into this ward what I would do to find my family. And I will find my family, so I will ask you once again – will you try to stop me? Because if you choose to do this, I will call on you. The world is a much more interesting place with you in it, Agent Starling, but I won’t regret killing you.”

Competing trains of thought crossed Clarice’s mind. The instinct to bite, to retreat, to simply walk away without giving him the satisfaction of seeing her crack. After a moment’s quiet, she asked, “Would you eat me, Dr. Lecter?”

“Oh, yes. Not an ounce nor an inch of you would go to waste.”

At that, she smiled a sharp, canine smile. “Your husband wouldn’t let you.”

Lecter’s menace faltered. He almost looked pleased. “Are you so certain you can trust a beast in a cage?”

“I’m willing to find out if you are.”

V.

Clarice was sitting on the floor of her hotel room when her phone rang on the bulky chipboard dresser. She was already in her pajamas – an oversized FBI Academy t-shirt and yoga pants – but nowhere ready for sleep. When she saw Crawford’s name on the caller ID, she felt certain she wouldn’t sleep any time soon.

“Hello?”

“Did I wake you, Starling?”

She pushed her reading glasses atop her head and squinted at the bedside digital clock. 12:03am stared back. “No, I’m just studying for the Code exam.”

“Well, don’t stay up too late,” Crawford said. “Wheels up by 0600. Memphis PD is taking Graham to the abduction site first thing, then he’s being interviewed. The media’s already turned this case into a feeding frenzy, and Chilton’s been chumming the waters since he got to Tennessee. It’s going to hell out there tomorrow. Be prepared for that.”

“I will, sir,” she said neutrally. “Thank you.”

A pause. “If you have something on your mind, Starling, I’d like to hear it now. I don’t want any surprises in the field tomorrow.”

Clarice hadn’t spoken to Crawford about Emilia Strand. Not in the car on the way back to Virginia, and not during the flight to Memphis. What she wanted to say was unfitting of an agent-in-training, especially when directed at a department chief.

“You don’t want me to say, sir.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.”

“Well, if I’m being totally honest, I was thinking you’re a two-faced recruiting sergeant son of a bitch. Sir.”

“It’s been said.”

Sighing, she sat down on the foot of the bed. “I want to believe you did the right thing when you picked up Graham and Lecter, because I can’t say the same thought wouldn’t cross my mind. But what you did was wrong. It was illegal, and it was wrong.”

Crawford sighed in turn. “During the Dolarhyde case, Lecter sent that sick bastard after Graham’s family. He put Graham’s wife in the hospital and tried to kill his step-son. Then Graham left his family in shambles to run off with the man that tried to murder them. Do you really think you could trust them with a child?”

“No, sir.”

She considered her next words carefully, then said, “Can I ask you a favor? I know you don’t have to hear me out, especially since I just cussed at you.”

“You want a _no recycle_ ,” Crawford said. “I know. Your friend Mapp already turned up in my office about it.”

Embarrassment made Clarice’s face flush. “I’m so sorry, sir. She gets a little protective of me.”

“The Academy’s strict. If you keep missing school – if I keep you out here much longer – you’ll get recycled. I could make sure you got back in, but that’s all I can promise.”

“Just let me stay with this,” she said. “As long as I can.”

“I will. And I’ll make sure you get back to school on time.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Go to sleep, Starling.”

The line clicked. Clarice ruffled a hand through her hair and tossed her phone aside. She slid back to the floor where her casefiles and laptop awaited her. Clicking open her forms from the Child and Family Services of Montana, she searched through the foster care and adoption records that she had requested.

Without a warrant, or a real badge, she had limited access; without a name or description, she had even less to go on. She started with what she knew for sure. Jane Doe: white female, under the age of five, probably brown-haired, probably light-eyed. Placed within the last year, likely in or around Livingston, with no known distinguishing features or birthmarks.

Sitting in her hotel room, Clarice found herself imagining what Emilia might have looked like, while she tried not to imagine Catherine Baker Martin dead in the river.

VI.

Security guards assigned to the maximum security ward walked the corridor once an hour between 8pm and 5am. It was the simplest assignment on the weekly duty roster, and also the most tedious. Graham and Lecter were quiet, well-behaved, and totally compliant, usually more interested in one another than anyone or anything else. It had earned the ward the nickname _The Honeymoon Suite_ , since the patients’ demands for privacy left the night shift guards little more to do than catch up on their reading.

Barney hated the moniker. He thought it was tacky, and scolded anybody who used it around him. Tonight the guard on duty, accompanying Barney through his double shift, was Waltham. Waltham liked the quiet of the maximum security ward and always looked forward to this assignment. This week, he plucked a neglected James Joyce novel from his bookshelf to read, anticipating another peaceful night. After all, there was only one occupant left in the ward. Lecter was the calmest, and most courteous, of the two; now he was without even his spouse to converse with.

Every hour, on the hour, Waltham put the gas station receipt he was using as a bookmark between the pages. Then he slid past Barney (who was already halfway through _Pride and Prejudice_ ) at the desk and slowly paced to the end of the corridor. Past the rows of empty cages to the only lighted cell, where Lecter stood with closed eyes. Waltham repeated this hourly before returning to the desk to take up his book.

At midnight, Waltham once more began the routine. He set aside his reading and walked the lonely stretch to Lecter’s cell. This time Lecter was splayed on the ground, facedown with blood on his mouth. His right wrist was chewed open, a vein bleeding freely down his arm and into a puddle on the concrete. Waltham flinched, then called out.

“Call medical – we need a stretcher!”

Barney rose from behind the desk, his hand already on the phone to page the infirmary. “What happened?”

“Lecter opened a vein.” Waltham quickly pulled out his keyring to open the lock. His free hand went for the baton on his hip as he pushed back the glass barrier. “Looks like a suicide attempt.”

_“This is all so wrong_ , _”_ Barney thought but didn’t say. Instead he paged for a stretcher and bolted down the hall. Lecter was unconscious and unresponsive. Barney checked for a pulse before he and Waltham turned Lecter over. Once the stretcher arrived, the two night nurses on duty helped them move Lecter, and Waltham cuffed him to the rail by his uninjured wrist. Then they were all gone, the stretcher’s wheels clattering down the hallway, and Barney was left alone in the ward.

There was blood on his white smock and on the floor. With a sigh and a hunch of his big shoulders, he went to the janitorial closet to retrieve a mop and bucket. The ward seemed eerily silent then as he mopped up the blood. It was often silent, but for Lecter and Graham’s soft banter; now it seemed empty and dead.

What was it Graham had said on the tarmac? _“Don’t let my husband scare you.”_ Barney wasn’t afraid of them, but he knew what they were capable of. He knew Graham would bite and claw and thrash his way out of his restraints to get back to Lecter. He knew Lecter didn’t have to move a muscle to get his neighbors in the next cell to kill themselves. He knew they were monsters, but he didn’t expect this.

This was…undignified, somehow. Unseemly.

Once finished, Barney returned to his desk. The clock read 1:05am. He sighed again and picked up the phone to check in with the infirmary. There was no response. Uncomfortable in the silence, he got up and headed up the staircase beyond the security gate to see what was going on.

“Waltham, are you coming back down? We need to file an incident report on this.”

At the threshold, the sight of blood halted Barney in mid-stride. The infirmary was in disarray, furnishings thrown about, equipment tossed aside. Waltham lay on the ground, sputtering on a mouthful of blood. The two night nurses had each been stabbed in the throat, one by a pair of scissors and the other the clasp of Lecter’s handcuffs. They were already dead, their eyes glassy and gray.

Barney rushed to Waltham’s side and rolled him onto his back. A scalpel nestled between his ribs had punctured his lung. He grabbed at Barney’s smock shirt; he wheezed and stammered, but Barney didn’t understand what he was saying. Not until Barney felt a presence behind him and a needle in his neck did he realize Waltham tried to warn him. Pain stung him, but it was too late to react as Lecter pressed the plunger and pumped sedatives into the vein.

As narcotic fog swiftly washed over Barney, he was still aware of Lecter. In person, without the benefit of glass, muzzles, or shackles, Lecter towered over him. His wrist was carefully sutured shut and tied off, following the raised ridge of scar tissue that edged the vein. Weakness gripped Barney, then the terror of his circumstances as Lecter bent to his level, uncomfortably close.

“You should be feeling it now. You won’t lose consciousness – not fully – but that should keep you relaxed.”

With his last shred of bravery, Barney took a futile swipe at Lecter and missed by a wide margin. Lecter looked sympathetic rather than angry. Barney’s limbs went slack and Lecter stood, then hefted Barney under the arms to drag him away from the slaughter.

“I apologize for having to treat you so poorly, Barney. This was never my intention. You’ve always been kind to my husband and I, and kindness doesn’t go unnoticed.”

His head lulled back, Barney realized distantly that Lecter was hefting him up into a stationary bed. Once Barney was safely on the mattress, Lecter arranged his arms and legs, then smoothed the creases from his bloodied smock.

“You’ll survive this. Few others will, I’m afraid, and I regret the position that puts you in. But I promise that no harm will come to you, either by my hand or my husband’s, once we’re free. Please nod if you understand me.”

It took some effort, but Barney nodded. Lecter smiled fondly, then patted Barney’s shoulder.

“Good. Thank you, Barney. I do hope I don’t see you again too soon.”

As quickly as Lecter appeared, he was gone again. Darkness crept into the corners of Barney’s vision as the drugs inched him toward unconsciousness. It spared him the echoes of screaming that followed soon after.


	8. The Photograph

I.

The shared rooms of Hannibal Lecter’s memory palace didn’t always remain closed, shuttered as they were by Will Graham’s lock and key. For the last year, Hannibal allowed himself those fleeting, silent moments of sorrow behind the walls of the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, and to feel for latches long withheld. Today, with Will in Tennessee and the hospital long behind him, Hannibal was free to open those doors and walk amid their reconstructed spaces. On the other side, he found the rooms in Paris where Emilia lived and breathed.

There was her bedroom, painted green in pastoral scenes of lambs and rabbits, often filled with the echoes of laughter or music in his mind. The dining room where they three sat at the table as a family, completed as they were by Emilia’s presence, the warm, bright little center of their lives together. Other rooms held quieter moments: of reading to Emilia before bed, of hesitant first steps, and of tending to her fever whenever she fell ill. These were the scenes he remembered and grieved for, even when the conditions of their captivity made it difficult to put a voice to them.

Hannibal had other, bloodier things on his mind for that year in the maximum security ward. Things to do with Jack Crawford, Frederick Chilton, and now that family in Livingston, Montana.

Far beyond these doors, leading to other times and places, laid the thresholds to his previous lives. A door opened to his office in Baltimore and to a particular, peculiar instance. Will now knew this moment, too, the minutiae of sight and sound occupying its own space in his mind. It must have been nine years ago now, when Hannibal Lecter saw Jessica Grant for the first and last time.

Jessica had arrived unannounced in his waiting room one Monday afternoon, between his regular 2:00 pm and 3:00 pm appointments. He didn’t recognize her at first, standing in the doorway and struck by her familiar profile. She wore a tight black cocktail dress, long gloves, and high heels. Her now shoulder-length hair was curled in loose ringlets; as she drew off the theatrical black cat’s eye sunglasses, the color offset the pale blue of her eyes.

“You know, you’re a tough man to track down, Dr. Lecter,” she said with a bright pink lipstick smile. “But I never forget a face. Especially one as intriguing as yours.”

“I hate to seem discourteous, but I’m afraid I don’t recall meeting you,” Hannibal said. “Do we known one another?”

“Oh, you don’t know me, doctor, but I know you,” said Jessica with a musical lilt in her voice. “The last time we saw each other, you helped me out of a jam with my louse of a boyfriend Benjamin.”

“Jame Gumb.” Recognition flickered across Hannibal’s face, followed by amused fascination. “Or rather, when I knew you, you were still Jame Gumb. What name have you chosen for yourself, now that you have undergone the transformation you so brightly sought?”

She extended a gloved hand. Her smile broadened. “You can call me Jessica.”

II.

Jessica Grant sat in her black menagerie, lighted by the glow of her infrared goggles. She reclined in her armchair, dressed in a red-and-white polka dot dress and shaggy secondhand fur coat. Her long legs were covered in dark stockings to keep out the basement’s chill; the material also kept the moths from tickling her skin as they crawled up her calves and played in the fabric her skirt. They amused her so, her precious insects. They fluttered in her hair, squeaking and kissing her face with their little curled tongues. Furling and unfurling them, to taste her cheek, brow, and temple.

Sitting in the dark, Jessica smiled.

Once the moths were fed and their enclosures cleaned, she walked quietly into the oubliette room down the hall. She kept her breathing still to keep from waking the material asleep in the bottom of the well. The lenses of Jessica’s goggles extended on their protruding barrels as she leaned over the well’s mouth to peer inside. The material laid on her side, curled into herself like a kitten. Her face was wet from crying. Jessica could tell nothing of Catherine’s color by infrared, but she looked thinner already.

Experience taught Jessica to wait for five to ten days before harvesting the hide. Sudden weight loss made the hide looser and easier to remove. It also took her material’s strength and made it more manageable. More docile. A quiet, dumb-struck sort of resignation came over them when they were starved; it kept them from throwing tantrums or hurting themselves. Hurting their beautiful hides.

It had definitely lost weight. Jessica felt bright and hopeful inside. This one was so special, so central to what she was trying to accomplish. She couldn’t stand to wait. She was never very good at waiting, even as a child; it so often earned her a good hard smack from her grandmother, or a ruler on the backside until the skin on her thighs broke. But she wouldn’t have to wait much longer – just another two days, maybe three.

Soon.

III.

The Tennessee State Troopers brought Will Graham to the Memphis FBI field office in a black transport van, shackled to the floor with leg irons. Clarice Starling sat across from him on the bench seat with two Troopers seated beside her. They didn’t bother with the face mask or the straightjacket, either when taking him to the abduction site or putting him back in the van for his meeting with Senator Ruth Martin. The decision was made between the Troopers and Dr. Chilton when he arrived in Memphis. It was meant to discourage the reporters posted outside Catherine Baker Martin’s apartment complex from stampeding at the sight of the muzzled cannibal serial killer. It was also meant, to one extent or another, to put the senator at ease. Jack Crawford didn’t have say in the matter, which Chilton spared no time reminding him.

Clarice knew Will wouldn’t bite. It wouldn’t do him any good to lash out or act violently, not when he was so close to getting what he wanted. And what he wanted, as far as she knew, was his family – his husband and their daughter, free at last. She just didn’t quite yet know how they would manage it, or when.

Sitting in front of her now, Will was a far cry from the broken, mourning creature that Chilton had dragged out of the ward. He watched her closely, meeting her eyes as he rarely did when in the cage. He didn’t look scared or hurt; instead he looked ready. She didn’t like it.

He knew she didn’t like it. She didn’t like that, either.

“What?” she asked him, aware of how callow it sounded.

“I could ask you the same,” he said.

Clarice nodded. “Your husband sends his regards.”

Will’s mouth twitched noncommittally. “You spoke to him?”

“Hard not to. Bit of a chatterbox, that one.”

“Yeah, well – try being married to him.”

“It’s funny. He didn’t look too sad to see you go. And neither did you, I’d wager.”

“Trust me when I tell you that I am bereaved, Agent Starling.”

She paused. “They say faith is a fine invention. You might invest in some for yourself.”

“Beliefs are much like bandages that way. I would feel much safer putting my faith in something tangible.”

“Like family?”

The twitch turned into the beginnings of a smile, then fell away. “Something like that.”

Clarice started to speak, but was interrupted by her phone buzzing in her bag. She swiped open her lock screen and found an email from Ardelia.

Subject: Re: Fwd: Child and Family Services – Records Request

_C,_

_I sifted through the files you sent this morning & narrowed it down to these three cases. What is Crawford having you digging in foster care records for???_

_See you soon (I hope!)_

_A_

Then Clarice opened the attachments. They were labeled Lane, Amy; Gellar, Shonda; and Palmer, Sarah Jane. She hadn’t told Ardelia what she was looking for, or how it was connected to the case. The twinge of guilt she felt was short-lived as she texted a quick message of thanks and put her phone away. Soon the van slowed to a halt as the driver wheeled them through the parking structure behind the Bureau field office, far away from the hungry press swarming outside the front entrance.

Will said nothing, betrayed nothing, and affected nothing. The Troopers opened the rear doors and led him out, Clarice following along behind. Crawford and Chilton waited to receive them. Crawford was blustering silently like a well-contained storm; Chilton was simply impatient, tapping the toe of an expensive designer shoe on the pavement. Up five floors by elevator and escorted by three Troopers, they made their way to conference room 508. There, with Agents Lassiter and Mendes, sat Senator Ruth Martin. In person, and without the flattery of makeup for the cameras and press conferences, the senator had a shrewd, hawk-like look about her.

Clarice stood back as the stiff pleasantries of the occasion were quickly dispensed. Will was instructed to sit down at one side of the long conference table. His chains were obscured underneath it, as well as the jacket Chilton slid onto his shoulders, in a rather blatant effort to hide them. A camera was aimed at him to record the interview. Senator Martin sat at the other end of the table. They were each flanked on either side by Chilton and Crawford respectively. The senator looked as though she wanted to pounce Will and rip the truth from him, but she remained calm. She was too smart for a dramatic, amateur move like that.

Each of them were capable of violence. Each of them, as Clarice realized with a pit in her stomach, had lost a daughter. Some acts of violence were just more warranted than others.

“Senator Martin,” said Chilton, as though making a toast, “meet Will Graham.”

Will said nothing. Martin straightened in her seat. Her fingers tapped on the papers her office had drawn up that morning. Chilton cleared his throat.

“Mr. Graham has indicated to me, Senator Martin, that he wants to contribute some special knowledge in return for some small considerations of his confinement.”

Martin held up the document. “Mr. Graham, this is an affidavit which I’ll now sign. It states that I guarantee to help you, provided the conditions of our agreement are met. Would you like to read it now?”

Will looked to Crawford. The line of Crawford’s mouth drew tight and thin.

“I won’t waste your time begging for privileges,” Will said quietly. “I trust you at your word.”

The senator nodded and signed the document. “You can count on it.”

“And the name?” asked Crawford.

“Agent Crawford, please,” Chilton began with a chuckle. “We’ll get to the matter at hand at the senator’s discretion.”

Will spoke again, this time looking off the space above the conference table. “The killer previously went by the name William Rubin prior to her transition. This would have been about ten years ago. At that time, she was romantically involved with – and later murdered – one of my husband’s patients, Benjamin Raspail. She was living in Baltimore and would have gone by Billy rather than William.”

Clarice was struck by practiced way Will spoke, as though reading a script. Hannibal Lecter’s script, she knew, his husband’s words tumbling out of his mouth. Placed there, like parcels to be opened by the senator. She said nothing – could prove nothing – as the interview continued.

“What about a physical description?” asked Agent Mendes.

“She’s about six foot one and would be about thirty-five years old now. Average build, around 190 pounds. Light brown hair and pale blue eyes, and tattoos on her arms and torso. She would have gotten these in prison – they would be faded and crudely drawn. Everything else of note has already been given to the FBI during my interviews with Clarice Starling.”

He looked to Clarice, then. Like he did at the hospital to undermine Crawford, locked in the cage, choosing when to draw her in. Clarice held her breath as Senator Martin’s gaze slid to her before snapping back to Will.

“I’ve made temporary arrangements for you here in Memphis. We’ll talk about your situation and you’ll go on to Brushy Mountain once…” Martin paused. “Once we’ve finished here.”

Clarice’s phone buzzed once more, but she ignored it until she stepped outside.

IV.

The Tennessee authorities were taking no chances with Will Graham. Once outside of the three-ring media circus, they were determined to hold him without exposing him to the dangers posed by the city jail. He was far too much of a curiosity for that. The thought of Will in lock-up with less exotic breeds of common criminals conjured images of predatory animals in Clarice’s mind. A fox in a henhouse, a wolf dragging sheep away from the herd – all gleaming teeth and bloodied fur.

The answer to this problem was the former courthouse and jail: a great, Gothic-style building made of granite and iron bars. It was an office building now, sumptuously restored and established as a historical site. The placard outside told of its proud and storied history; today it looked like a medieval fortress, surrounded by police cruisers and long, black SUVs.

Clarice sat on the bench in the lobby beneath the elaborate domed skylight. She was tethered to the wall outlet by her phone and USB charger, a legal pad and pen in her lap. Through the bank of glass doors, she saw Chilton amid a knot of reporters on the main steps. There were two cables news crews among the throng of local anchors, their cameras televising Chilton’s interview nationwide. She tapped her foot on the ground and tried to ignore the scene outside as she stared into her slowly charging phone.

As of this afternoon, Crawford, Mendes, Lassiter, and the rest of the Memphis field office were scrambling around, armed with the name William Rubin. Clarice was told to sit at the courthouse and wait for word to come down when Will was cleared for transport. She was just his babysitter now, acting as some smaller, less important extension of Crawford’s authority while Chilton preened for the cameras.

Then, once Will was safely hidden away in Brushy Mountain, Clarice would be shipped back to Quantico on the first flight out. Back to classes and exams. Back to Ardelia with a firm pat on the back to show for herself, while Catherine Baker Martin’s killer made off with her skin. While Emilia Strand grew up in the safe anonymity of Montana prairieland, and Clarice’s life resumed its quiet, unassuming march forward.

But today, she decided with a flutter in her stomach, she was going to intervene.

Clarice scrolled through the .PDF files on her phone: Amy Lane, Shonda Gellar, and Sarah Jane Palmer. None of the records had pictures of the children, but they had names and addresses. She fed the names of the Lanes, Gellars, and Palmers into her browser’s search engine to look for any relevant information. Social media posts, family photo albums, public records. Amy Lane’s foster family lived a boring life on a cattle ranch, where Bill and Wanda Lane provided a comfortable place for their five children to grow up. Amy looked happy and healthy, but her eyes were too small, her face too thin.

Shonda Gellar was a shy girl with straight hair and a button nose. Her foster parents Luke and Jamie lived in a double-wide trailer with two cats. Their social media pages were filled with finger paintings and pictures of Shonda in footed pajamas, hugging the family pets. Shonda looked close, but her eyes were too green.

Clarice searched for Dave and Lacey Palmer and found Lacey’s Facebook page. Lacey was a dental hygienist who posted about romance novels. The photo album was full of pictures of Sarah Jane, who was small for her age with long, wild brown curls and ears big enough to stick out from them. Her light eyes were edged by long lashes, big as saucers under her full eyebrows. The photos showed her outside her foster parents’ little white house, playing in their bright flower garden. Always dressed in pale, pretty spring colors, with little pleated dresses and sparkly shoes.

Sarah Jane Palmer looked so much like Will Graham that it made Clarice’s breath stick. She wrote down the address – 708 Finney Road – along with the name. Then she saved the pictures onto her phone with shaking hands, and wondered just what it was she planned to do with them.

V.

Two officers of the Tennessee Department of Corrections were on duty when Clarice made her way to the sixth floor of the courthouse, where Will was being kept. It was a cavernous space with white walls and polished oak floors and molding to match. The smaller of the officers stood up from behind his desk when she stepped off the elevator. The larger officer sat in a folding chair at the far end of the room, facing the door of the cell. He was the suicide watch.

“Are you authorized to speak to the prisoner, ma’am?” asked the officer at the desk. His desk set included a phone, two riot batons, and pepper spray.

Clarice showed him her temporary badge. “Yes, I am. I’ve interviewed him before.”

“You know the rules? Don’t pass the barrier.”

“Of course, officer. Thank you.”

The temporary cell was a modular steel cage, assembled in the center of the room. It was brightly lit and sparsely furnished with a bed, chair, and desk. Will sat in the corner of the cell, out of sight and concealed by the thick bars. His eyes looked distant and glassy, as though he were somewhere far afield.

Clarice watched him for a moment. She thought of Emilia Strand. She thought of Emilia’s fair little dresses, coats, and shoes. She thought of what it must be like to be held by monsters – rocked to sleep by monsters, read to by monsters. Loved by monsters. But Hannibal Lecter wasn’t the devil, and Will Graham wasn’t the man who held the devil to his breast. These were men, not beasts – and men loved their children. Men were weak like that, and she could exploit those weaknesses. At least, that was what Clarice told herself she was doing.

She took a deep breath, steeled herself, and approached the cage.

“Did you come to look at me one last time?” Will asked. Softly, and without teeth.

“In a way, I suppose I did,” she answered, just as softly. “I wanted the chance to talk – just the two of us.”

“What is it you see when you look at me, Agent Starling?”

“Do you want to know the truth?”

“Insofar that you’re willing to tell the truth. And that you believe I’ll respond to truthfulness.”

She paused, then said, “I had hoped to see a monster, and instead I found a man. That made things…complicated.”

Will smiled at that, though his eyes were still faraway. “People often say I married a monster. Those same people fail to realize I’m no better.”

Clarice began to pace around the cage in long, striding steps, following the barrier laid out in tape on the floor. “Your husband told me that even monsters love their families.”

“Things with fangs still love their children. Claws and antlers, too.”

She stopped, her body situated between his distant gaze and the blank wall behind her. “Why did you lie to Senator Martin?”

“What makes you think I lied?”

“Because you were the only one telling the truth. Everyone else has been lying to me, Will. I want to know why you started lying to me, too.”

“A name for a name,” he said. “My daughter’s in exchange for your killer’s. That was the deal I made with Crawford. He ignored it.”

“So you chose to withhold to strike back at Crawford?”

“A daughter for a daughter – isn’t that what we’ve all been bargaining for?”

Clarice swallowed. She stepped forward until the tip of her shoes touched the tape barrier. “What if I bargained with you now?”

Will leaned back against the bars of his cell, then folded his arms over his knees. He looked fragile like that, wounded and angry. She knew it wasn’t an act.

“You have nothing to offer me.”

“I can offer you information – about myself, like before. When you two were toying with me. Quid pro quo.”

“I’m not as easily amused as my husband, Agent Starling. And I’m not as cruel.”

She stepped over the tape and said, “I’ll tell you whatever you want. About my father, or…after he died. Your husband wanted to know.”

“I don’t.”

“Why not?”

He blinked – long, slow, and fluttering – before looking her in the eye. She squared herself up, despite the ugly, panicked feeling coiling in her gut.

“Aren’t you curious?”

When he didn’t answer, she began to tell the story.

“I was sent to the ranch right after my father’s funeral. It was either that or go into foster care, so my mother’s cousin took me in. She and her husband were kind to me. He was rough around the edges, but decent. In the spring after I was sent away, when it was warm, sometimes I would wake up before dawn to this…this awful sound. It scared me, so I stayed under the covers until it was time to get up and help my cousin feed the horses. Then one morning, I heard the sound again – it was like screaming, coming from the barn. So I put on my shoes and went to the barn look. My cousin’s husband was there with his ranch hands, and the lambs – they were all screaming.”

Tremors shook Clarice, deep in her core before moving outwards, making her shake. Will watched her as realization slowly dawned across his vacant expression.

“They were slaughtering the spring lambs.”

Tears pearled the corner of her eyes. She nodded. “Yes. There were only twelve of them left.”

“What did you do?”

“I…I just watched. They sounded like babies, or like small children crying. They were so scared – and they never stopped screaming.”

“Did you try to help?”

“ _I watched_.”

He regarded her with something akin to sympathy, or what she thought his sympathy would have looked like. Then he gently said, “Cruelty to animals is often an early sign of psychopathy.”

“I’m _not_ cruel to animals.” Her voice trembled so much she hardly recognized it.

“No, but you know that it is, and that needles at you.”

She dug the tears out of her eyes before she could shed them. “Will you tell me the skinner’s name?”

After a moment, he shook his head. “No.”

“Isn’t this what you wanted? You wanted me on your side – you wanted me to say that I’m just another orphan Jack Crawford pulled out of a classroom.”

“You’re not me.”

“Not yet.” She smiled wolfishly. “Because I’m just a few bad days away from being on the other side of the cage. Right?”

He gathered himself up from the floor and paced away from her, avoiding her gaze. “You endeared yourself to my perspective to use me to your advantage. This was all for your benefit – not mine, and not my daughter’s.”

Desperation flared bright inside of Clarice. She looked beyond the bars of the cage to the officer on suicide watch. He rose from his folding chair to say something to the officer at the desk. Still shaking, she reached into her bag for her phone. She found a photo of Sarah Jane Palmer in a pink dress and pink-and-purple striped leggings, playing in a field.

“Is this your daughter?”

Will flinched as though struck. At once he was at the bars, a hand extended to reach for the phone. She held it just out of his grasp. For it, his breath hitched. Desperation flared bright inside of him, too; bright enough for Clarice to see, written in his face. She swallowed again, then leaned forward to give him the phone.

Looking at it, his eyes welled. The dry sob that crawled out of him crumbled into a quiet, fraught sort of laughter. “They dressed her in pink. She hates pink. If I try to put her in something pink she throws a fit until I change her into something else.”

“Her name is Sarah Jane Palmer,” Clarice said. “She lives at 708 Finney Road in Livingston, Montana.”

“Have they taken care of her?”

“Yes. She looks happy in all the pictures.”

Nodding, he wiped his eyes and handed the phone back. She steadied herself and spoke in a firm, clear voice.

“Give me the name.”

“Her name was Jame Gumb. Not James _– Jame_. Then she began to go by Jessica. As far as I know, she still does.”

“What’s the last name?”

“I know as much as Hannibal does, and now I’m telling you.”

“Ms. Starling!” interrupted Chilton. He strode into the makeshift ward with two State Troopers on his heels. “Your role in this investigation is over. I’m going to have to insist you abstain from interviewing my patient without my consent.”

“I was instructed to stay behind and observe the transfer,” she reminded him sternly. “I’m just following orders.”

“Crawford isn’t here, and the day I listen to one of his trainees is the day my goose is well and truly cooked.” Chilton turned his sneer on Will next, who shrank away from the bars. “It seems that Senator Martin and the FBI have had all the fun they wish to have with you, so you’re cleared for transfer. You’re officially a prisoner of Brushy Mountain.”

Will said nothing. The look he leveled at Clarice from between the bars of his cage gave her pause.

VI.

Within the hour, Clarice once again found herself in the back of the transport van, en route to Brushy Mountain. There was only one corrections officer seated beside her this time, another in the passenger seat beside the driver. Will sat across from her, shackled at the wrists and ankles. He watched her from under the slope of his heavy lids, his eyes still bleary, red. Her hands shook, even as she gripped her bag to hide it. Her stomach never stopped fluttering as though she had made a mistake, the ramifications of which hung over her. She didn’t know just where they would fall, or how.

Once she got back, she would tell Crawford the killer’s true name. She wouldn’t tell him about Emilia, nor the secrets she and Will now shared. About the little white house on Finney Road – about the lambs.

The van was fifteen minutes outside Memphis when Will finally spoke to her.

“What time is it, Agent Starling?”

Clarice looked at her watch. “6:07.”

He nodded as though deliberating. She let out a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding.

“When I last saw your husband, he said he was going to find you,” she said. “What did he mean by that?”

“I never intended for you to be here when this happened.”

“What are you talking about?”

“What do you think I’m talking about?”

A cold sensation settled in the base of her spine. “I can’t let you do that.”

“You’re not going to stop me.”

“The hell I’m not.”

Will paused. He looked remorseful for a moment, but then it was gone. “I won’t hurt you, no matter what happens. But I will need you to trust me.”

Without wincing, he dislocated his right thumb in a quick, ghastly snapping noise. The cuff slipped off. He lunged for the corrections officer. Clarice was only vaguely aware of her head slamming against the wall of the van before everything went black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, Emilia is Will's biological child. I didn't really go into her paternity in Pioneer to the Falls, and only vaguely touched on it up until this point, but, yes, she is Will's. Due to questions/comments/general concerns about Emilia (which I absolutely appreciate, and have taken into consideration while working on upcoming chapters), [I actually wrote a short essay on the topic of her paternity](http://magenmagenmagen.tumblr.com/post/139245716438/this-is-a-fic-meta-post-im-so-sorry), as well as the overall thematic framework behind her role. Hopefully this will help clarify things.


	9. The Homecoming

I.

Sarah Jane Palmer sometimes dreamt of a house with two floors. It had wooden stairs and doors with great brass handles. There was a dog named Harrison with shaggy gray fur that lived there, too, and a canopy of trees in the small backyard where she and the dog would play. In her dreams she lived there with her parents, and slept in a room painted like a green field. She was happy there.

Her parents were very different from the parents that took care of her now. She remembered their voices, how closely they held her, and how they smelled when she tucked her head against their chests. Warm and safe, the way home smelled. They spoke in soft words that she recalled with absolute clarity behind her eyes whenever she slept, and they carried her in strong arms. But then they were gone – disappearing one night, when it was bright and loud – and she never saw them again.

Her parents now had two children of their own and lived in a little white house with a garden out front. They wanted her to call them Mom and Dad. She didn’t call them that; she didn’t call them much of anything. That seemed okay. They called her by a different name than the one she knew, too. If she concentrated hard enough, she could hear it – _Emilia –_ before the sounds faded into the silence that surrounded her memories, like a whisper caught by the wind.

She was happy here, in their small house without stairs or a dog, but it wasn’t the same. Nothing was the same.

When it was warm, Sarah Jane liked to sit outside in the backyard behind the white house. She liked to run the blades of grass between her fingers and feel the ground against her skin. It felt good, like the sun felt good. Clean and warm. But it was cold now, and everything was white. The woman that called her Sarah Jane bundled her in a coat, boots, and hat, and led her outside to play in the snow. Her gloved hands held Sarah Jane’s as they walked through the flurry that stuck wet in their hair. She smiled at Sarah Jane and asked, “Do you want to make angels?”

Sarah Jane pulled at the edge of her puffy pink coat. She had seen snow once before, but never deep enough to swallow her ankles. The last time it snowed, she was in Paris. Both of her fathers held her by one hand as they walked together. Her booted feet slipped around on the slick pavement, unsure underneath her, making her wobble between her fathers. She laughed at that. Nothing seemed scary when they were there. Things seemed scarier without them – even snow. But the woman that wanted Sarah Jane to call her Mom was smiling, so she nodded and smiled back.

That night, in her dreams, she saw the two-story house. She saw herself there with her fathers. If she closed her eyes tight enough now, even in the snow, she could find herself there again – warm and safe in their arms.

II.

Clarice Starling woke to the steady murmur of the transport van’s engine and the awareness of blood on her face. She was in the front seat, slumped against the passenger-side window. Will was driving. It was dark ahead through the windshield; the van’s headlights sliced pale gray cones across the flat rural landscape on either side of them. Will was driving, and she was handcuffed to the gear shift. There was blood on his cheek and dried to his hands; in the dark, it looked like ink on his fingers where they held the steering wheel.

She remembered, slowly, what came before. Will had attacked the corrections officer beside her. He used his opened cuff like a blade to stab hard at the officer’s throat. The blood gushed hot and dark. Then he struck her head against the van’s interior wall. Absently, she pulled at her cuffed wrist.

“Did you kill them all?”

Will looked silently at the road, then asked, “How’s your head?”

“Like it’s been smashed against the side of a van.”

“Sorry. I had to make sure you didn’t do anything dramatic.”

Clarice rattled her cuffs. “And this isn’t dramatic?”

“You’ll be free once we’ve finished.”

“He’s coming for you, isn’t he?”

“Yes.”

The two-lane blacktop sped by in a liquid blur of pavement and brush. She swallowed and said, “You can’t hurt that family, Will.”

“You’re in no position to bargain for them, Clarice.”

“We bargained.”

“And I promised I wouldn’t hurt you,” he reminded her darkly. “That promise isn’t up for negotiation.”

“Those people did nothing to you.”

“They have our child.”

“They didn’t take her – they took care of her, raised her, because they think of her as theirs. And for all they know, she is.”

“And there are consequences for that.”

“Jack Crawford is the one you’re angry at, Will. This family – those children – have nothing to do with that. You’re not this man.”

“Don’t pretend to know what kind of man I am. You won’t enjoy finding out.”

“You want to talk down to me? Fine. But I know your case, Will. Your husband was a monster before you married him,” she said. “You put him on a leash – you told him who he could kill. That’s not a man who would murder an innocent family.”

He didn’t respond, his face unreadable by the cool glow of the headlights. The silence that filled the space between them angered her. She pulled on her cuffs again.

“Are you going to have me believe you’re content to slaughter that family in front of your daughter? That after everything you said you’ve done for her, you would do that to your baby?”

“You can’t understand my family, or what we’re capable of doing for one another. I’d advise you not to try.”

“I don’t have to try – I can put a call to the local field office and tell them you’re on your way to Livingston.”

The look he leveled her was wrought in iron. “You wouldn’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“You’d have to explain how you know that, and what we’re doing there.”

“I have no issue with throwing Crawford to the wolves.”

“And your career along with him?”

“If I were inclined to self-preservation, I wouldn’t have been looking monsters in the teeth.”

Will slowed the van down to coast to a stop, veering onto the gravel off the side of the road. A car was waiting ahead on the opposing side of the two-lane highway. Its headlights suddenly blinked on. He reached past her for the glove compartment, opening it to produce her phone and the handcuff key. Clarice hesitated to take them, but he looked earnest as he pressed them into her hands.

“I won’t try to stop you,” he said, “any more than you’ll try to stop me.”

“You trust me?” she asked.

“No. But I’m a student of monsters, too.”

Clarice recognized Hannibal Lecter’s silhouette against the twin shafts of light cutting through the night. It was only then that she felt how vulnerable she was – handcuffed, unarmed, and surrounded on all sides by things better kept in cages. Will met him halfway, standing in the crisscross of the opposing headlights. Hannibal cupped Will’s face to gently kiss him with closed eyes; Will gathered Hannibal’s shirt in his bloodied hands to pull him close and keep him there. They exchanged words that Clarice couldn’t make out at such a distance and twined their hands together as they slipped away into the dark.

Within hours the lights of approaching squad cars dotted the horizon in balls of blue and red, but Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter were already gone.

III.

In the morning, the sun crawled across the sky to dye it in deep purple hues. Traveling west by desolate highway, relief was a strange, quiet passenger in the stolen sedan. It was well into mid-morning when finally, Hannibal decided to stop. To rest. He had the opportunity to shower and change out of his bloodied prison uniform while still in Maryland; Will was still covered in blood, flecked as it was to his cheek and brow.

The roadside motel on the Kansas-Missouri border was clean and remote. Hannibal drew shut the curtains, covering the broad windows that sat above the old whining radiator. Across the room, Will began to pull off his ruined uniform, opening the buttons down the front. When his hands wavered, Hannibal finished undressing him. The ball of silence in the car had blossomed to fill the motel room, too. For it, Will felt unsure on his feet, as though he could buckle at the slightest prod or push.

“I just can’t get her out of my head.”

“Nor should you,” said Hannibal softly. “This is evidence – of her safety, and her life.” He paused. “Did she look happy?”

“Yes. She’s gotten so big. I didn’t expect it – I didn’t _not_ expect it, but…”

“We’ve missed a year of her life, Will. These moments – the pleasurable heights and the inevitable lows – were stolen from us. We must mourn them, too, as we’ve mourned her.”

“I’m tired of mourning.”

“Then we needn’t mourn much longer. Soon we’ll have our daughter back, and we’ll do whatever necessary to ensure those who took her from us will suffer for that crime.”

The year spent separated in captivity melted away as they undressed one another. Hannibal led Will to the shower to wash him of the evidence; of the scents of blood and sweat, dirt and metal that clung still to his skin. It had been a ritual of Hannibal’s: the peculiar satisfaction that came of keeping Will, in every sense. Before it was a moment of intimacy shared at the end of the day, when Will indulged Hannibal’s affections as well as his touch. Today, it was something altogether necessary.

In the shower, Hannibal reached around Will to wash his hands with the cloth. He was mindful of the red rings beneath the chewed nails. Will closed his eyes and leaned back against the warm, firm weight of Hannibal’s body. The familiar weight. The comforting weight, strong yet soft in all the ways that mattered.

“I wasn’t there for you,” said Will. His voice was small, muffled by the spray of the showerhead. “After she was taken – I was never there.”

“You were there,” replied Hannibal, in that tender way he did when he wanted to avoid whatever argument Will was resigned to having.

“I was angry.”

“You were grieving.”

“So were you, Hannibal.”

“You were there,” Hannibal said again. “In any moment of doubt or grief, your presence steeled me against the impulse to give myself to rage. Without you, I would have been lost to that darkness. Trust me when I tell you that it was enough.”

Will wasn’t satisfied with being forgiven so quickly, but it wasn’t worth the effort to fight Hannibal, nor the grief. Funeral feelings had become a comfortable presence between them, filling their spaces and their silences. Theirs was already a complicated marriage before Emilia was taken from them. Its peace was fashioned out of those spaces and silences, carefully cultivated, hard-won, and long-suffered for. Without her, old instincts and impulses surged back out of their neat, tidy containers – spilling over, seeking blood for blood.

But that door was now closed, and Will hadn’t the mettle in him left to open it again. Instead he kissed Hannibal: beginning in the shower, warm and wet and naked, and continuing at the doorway into the rented room. It wasn’t about sex so much as it was about funeral feelings, or their waning absence. To fill that well with the physical comfort of hands, mouths, and bare skin.

Still damp and clean, Hannibal laid Will across the bedsheets – kissing, touching, finding the soft places that reacted to teeth and touch. Finding one another, in the familiar solace of bodies meeting in complementary angles. When Hannibal drew away, he settled between Will’s thighs to take him into his mouth. To suck, to swallow, to stroke him in hand as he watched Will’s skin flush and his expression open to pleasure. Will felt the planes of Hannibal’s face and caressed his scalp, gripping Hannibal’s hair between his fingers to gently pull. The closer Hannibal brought Will to coming, the harder Will pulled – not guiding, but reacting. Trusting. Yielding.

Once Hannibal had finished sucking the orgasm out of Will, he swallowed, licking at the dewed head to lap away every trace of it from Will’s leaking cock. He sat up to stretch over Will and kiss him again, dipping his tongue between Will’s lips to fill his mouth with his own taste. Will opened to the kiss, then, with a sigh, turned his head and closed his eyes. Hannibal paused to observe Will. He studied the redness climbing Will’s chest and face, the way his shower-damp hair stuck to his brow; the way Will’s mouth looked when kiss-bruised.

Will was beautiful – Will was suffering, and Hannibal hadn’t agreed to such a fraught dichotomy. For that, he reached for Will’s throat to close his hand around it. Squeezing, gently, he traced his thumb along the line of Will’s jaw until the breath caught beneath his hand.

“Do you want me to punish you?” Hannibal asked, without malevolence or pretense.

“Yes.”

“You must wound me first, Will. I have been wounded, but not by you.”

Will swallowed. His eyelashes fluttered as he held his eyes tightly shut. He then tipped his head back to lengthen his bared throat, his pulse thrumming into Hannibal’s palm. “Then I want your forgiveness. But that requires a certain measure of wrath first.”

“I’m not angry with you.”

“This would be…easier, if you were. Feel easier.”

“It’s beyond me to forgive you for what you’ve done to yourself, regardless of my feelings. Only you can grant yourself the space for that kind of compassion.”

Closing his fingers around Hannibal’s wrist, Will held him there. “How would you have me forgive myself?”

“Look at me.” When Will’s eyes remained closed, Hannibal said it again. “ _Look at me_ , Will.”

Finally, Will did as he was told. His eyes were glassy with unshed tears. Hannibal studied him a moment longer, then caught Will by the waist to pull him into his lap. He held Will against him, Will’s legs draped around his waist, arms around his shoulders. He petted the length of Will’s spine, down his ribcage, and over his thighs, kissing him deep and full until Will sighed.

“If you truly want me to hurt you, I will,” Hannibal promised him, “because I would never deny you. But I will not hurt you today.”

This was how Hannibal took Will: holding him, kissing him, making him meet his gaze. Whispering between their lips as Will rocked in his lap. Slowly at first, Will riding up and down on Hannibal’s cock as Hannibal thrust into him, before Will bore down to take it deeper, harder. The need to be punished – to have Hannibal’s hands on his throat, for the pain rather than the pleasure -- bled out of Will as he gripped Hannibal’s shoulders, his fingertips leaving marks in the skin. Holding onto him, Will pressed their foreheads together and kissed Hannibal, letting Hannibal take what he wanted – what they both needed – after being so long apart.

Afterwards, they allowed themselves to sleep, in a tangle of arms and legs and entwined fingers. Just long enough to rest dreamlessly before they went to Montana to retrieve their child, lulled by the sounds of the wind and the road outside.

IV.

The EMT had to verify that the blood on Clarice’s face didn’t belong to her. It belonged to the corrections officer that had been pulled out of the back of the transport van. His name was Howard Alvarez, as she overheard, when he was zipped into a body bag, along with the driver and other officer. Clarice could have told the woman that, but she found it hard to speak, to think, when the whole world felt muffled.

Once back in Memphis, she was dropped into an interview room. She gave a recorded account of the escape to the two agents at the table, whose names she immediately forgot upon release. Clarice explained how she was incapacitated and handcuffed to the gear shift. She didn’t explain how she tried to reason with a known serial killer, and bargain for the lives of the family she helped put in harm’s way. She didn’t explain how that family was endangered in the first place, glancing periodically at the two-way glass across the room. Instinct, as well as the hot feeling on her neck, told Clarice that Jack Crawford was on the other side.

Clarice didn’t have to wonder if Crawford would be willing to throw her to the wolves to cover his tracks. At the moment, she was more concerned with covering hers. She had two options available to her: tell the truth, or lie. That was why, when asked “Did Lecter or Graham give an indication where they were headed?” she looked to the glass before answering, “They didn’t say.”

Only afterward, rushing to the women’s room to throw up a stomach’s worth of coffee and bile, did Clarice wonder if she did the right thing.

The volume had been turned down on the meeting at the field office, too, sitting at a conference table with Crawford and Chilton. Chilton sat at one end, his jacket on the back of the chair and his sleeves rolled up, posed theatrically with his face in his hands. Crawford sat at the other, his bottled anger reduced to a slow, disdainful simmer. Clarice sat between them in a FBI windbreaker, t-shirt, and jeans, the only clean change of clothes from her bag in her hotel room. Everything else was covered in blood. Her hands still smelled of it; she was convinced of as much, warm and coppery on her skin no matter how many times she scrubbed it away.

“Lecter escaped from the asylum at around 2:00am,” Crawford reported. “He faked a suicide attempt and used a lock pick hidden in his mouth to get out of his cuffs. Our people in Maryland found a loosened brick in Graham’s cell where he had been stashing paperclips and parts of broken pens. It looks like they had been planning this for some time.”

“How many people did he kill?” Clarice asked. She looked at the table rather than at Crawford.

“Eight. Four other staff members are still listed in critical condition. Combined with the three corrections officers Graham killed, that makes eleven.” Crawford then looked to Chilton. “I want to know how Graham gave Lecter a lock pick.”

Chilton lifted his head from his hands. “He must have given it to him yesterday before his transfer.”

“They had contact with one another?”

“There was an incident in the ward, yes,” Chilton said, looking sharply at Clarice. “It seems we’ve been duped.”

“We weren’t duped by anybody,” said Crawford. “This happened on your watch, in your facility, while you were busy preening for the cameras.”

“Oh, not today, Crawford. I won’t be solely blamed for this. This began when you came into _my_ facility and undermined _my_ authority to wheel and deal with those two. You knew what they would do and you chose to play their games. Now we’re both paying for it in the shape of a bawdy public spectacle.”

“What happens now?” Clarice asked loudly, intervening in the impending shouting match.

Crawford glowered sternly at Chilton, then said, “Senator Martin is raising hell with the U.S. Attorney’s Office. The Memphis field office is taking over the case, pending an investigation by the Inspector General. You and I are done here.”

Clarice felt suddenly deflated, as if all the air had been let out of the room. “So that’s it?”

“Not for me, it isn’t.” Chilton stood and retrieved his suit jacket from the back of the chair. “You two can enjoy sulking, but I intend to survive this debacle with my skin intact.”

“Where are you going?” asked Crawford.

“Sao Paulo, perhaps Monaco – just somewhere far away from here when Lecter and Graham come looking for me. Because they will come looking for me. They made that abundantly clear.”

“So you’re just going to run?”

“Yes – and if I were you, Agent Crawford, I would do the same.”

As Chilton left with a slam of the conference room door, Clarice let out a held breath.

“He’s not wrong,” she said quietly.

Crawford nothing else. Eventually, with a somber nod, he walked out, leaving Clarice with the certainty of that statement.

V.

Sarah Jane Palmer stood in the fresh snow-cover that blanketed the yard behind the house at 708 Finney Road. She was wearing her biggest, puffiest coat, her furry boots, and her knit cap pulled low to cover her ears. It snowed overnight; the white powder was almost up to her knees if she walked far enough out across the yard, her boots crunching with every step. She wasn’t afraid this time. She wanted to see if she could walk to the tree at the edge of the yard. When it was warm, the tree was bright and green. Now it was naked, its strong arms covered by white caps.

There was only one tree in the yard behind the little white house. It reminded her of the trees in the yard of the two-story house she often dreamt of. Her new parents never let her go that far out by herself, but she wanted to try.

Her foster mother, Lacey Palmer, was inside at the kitchen window. She kept an eye on Sarah Jane while she stepped inside to pull the kettle off the stove and pour hot water into her mug to let her teabags steep. Lacey let Sarah Jane play outside for at least an hour on the days that she was home with her. The little girl loved to be outside – to sit in the grass when the weather was right, and to look at the sky. Sarah Jane would wander off, if ever given the chance. To walk toward the horizon with no direction in mind, as though following the wind that swept low across the plains. She had to be watched like a hawk, otherwise she would just slip away.

Lacey filled her teacup and turned to replace the kettle on the stove. She shut off the burner, then turned to look out the window. Outside Sarah Jane stood in the knee-deep powder, facing the tree at the far edge of the backyard. A man appeared in the yard, then, walking across the snow toward Sarah Jane. He was dressed in a long, high-collared black coat and gloves.

Terror filled Lacey. She grabbed her phone off the counter and immediately started dialing 911 as she ran for the patio door. Through the glass she saw the man approach Sarah Jane with gloved hands held out to her. Lacey reached for the door to wrench it open when someone seized her from behind to drag her away. She didn’t have time to scream before her attacker closed his arm around her throat to stifle her.

Before she blacked out, Lacey Palmer was aware that her attacker spoke to her in a soft, restrained voice.

_“We’ll take our daughter and we’ll leave you alive, because it was asked of us. You’ll wonder what you could’ve done to stop us, but it was never about you. Be grateful for that.”_

Sarah Jane Palmer didn’t see her foster mother as she was pulled away from the door. Outside she stared up at the man that approached her. He had a kind face, but he looked sad to her. Her boots made crunching noises as she stepped away from him, her gloved fingers pulling at the edges of her coat.

“You don’t have to be afraid of me,” the man spoke softly. “I won’t hurt you.”

She took another step back, then stopped. The man did the same. After a moment, he crouched down to her level. Up close, he looked…softer.

“Do you remember me?” He held out a hand to beckon her closer to him. She looked at it, then back to the house. Her foster mother was gone from the window. “She’s okay. We didn’t hurt her, I promise.”

The patio door slid open and another man emerged from the house. He regarded her from a safe distance, and looked sad to her, too. Sarah Jane let go of her coat and stared at him until she remembered the two-story house with the small green yard.

“I need you to look at me,” the man in the black coat said. “Your name is Emilia. We’re going to take you home, alright?”

With hesitant steps, she approached him. She disregarded his hand to walk up to him, touching her fingers to his face to trace the familiar planes of skin and bone. Finally, her serious gaze broke as she scrunched her face with an affected growl, then laughed. She learned it from the dog, Harrison, the shaggy border collie; it always used to make her father laugh. He laughed this time, too, scooping her up into his arms to hold her to him. Just like before – when things were warm and safe, before everything changed.

Then, as quickly as Emilia was found, she disappeared with her fathers into the wind.


	10. The Call

I.

Clarice Starling knocked on the door to Jack Crawford’s office. When she peered inside with her final report, she found him at his desk. He had a glass of bourbon in front of him, along with an open case file. The bottle was safely out of sight. He didn’t look intoxicated, but she wouldn’t have blamed him if he were, in the face of things. She cleared her throat.

“Sir, I hope I’m not interrupting.”

Crawford’s mouth lifted into something close to a smile. He closed the dossier. She didn’t try to glance at what it was, despite her initial instinct.

“Nothing that couldn’t stand an interruption.”

Clarice placed her report on the edge of his desk, meek in her discomfort. “Just wanted to turn that in. And to say that I appreciate the opportunity to work for you, regardless of how things turned out.”

“You already gave your statement to the Memphis field office,” Crawford said. Not admonishing, but mild; just stating facts. “You don’t owe me a report. Especially after what you’ve been through.”

“No, sir, but I would feel better if I wrote it for the record,” said Clarice. “I wanted to make sure no one misconstrued what happened here. One way or another.”

She didn’t say it, but it gave her a reason to stay up the night before. Alone in her motel room in Memphis, rather than catching the first flight out with everyone else bound for West Virginia. The idea of sleeping made her feel sick when she still saw blood in the snow every time she closed her eyes. Red on white.

White fur. White teeth.

Crawford nodded, then eventually asked, “You drink bourbon, Starling?”

“Yes, sir.”

He retrieved a second glass and the bottle from his desk drawer. It was near-empty by then, but she said nothing of that, either. He poured her a drink. Finally, she sat down across from him.

“Thank you.”

They clinked glasses and drank. The alcohol burned all the way down, warm in Clarice’s fingers and toes.

“Any word on Catherine Martin?”

Crawford looked at the bottom of his glass and shook his head. “Memphis is rushing to track down the last known whereabouts of Jame Gumb, but the trail went cold about nine years ago. Besides that, they’re trying to connect either Gumb or the other names given to the purchase and import of hawkmoth specimens to establish a paper trail. But by their best guess, Catherine Martin only has one or two days left.”

“So after all that, they’re still no closer to catching the skinner?”

“You got the name out of Graham. You saw through the game he and Lecter were running. They’ll catch her because of you, Starling.”

Clarice took another drink. Crawford broke the silence that followed.

“Chilton fled for the high ground of protective custody last night. Senator Martin wanted his head on a pike, but he managed to get out of town alive. For now.”

She wiped her tinted lip balm from the rim of her glass. It helped her ignore how queasy she suddenly felt. “Do you think they’ll go after him?”

_They_. And there it was, like the bubble of hurt feelings that filled funeral homes and cemeteries. It was easier to say _they_ – easier than putting names to it.

“Whether Lecter and Graham come for him or not, he obviously did something to bring them to his door. Or at least, he believes he did. He might even have it coming at this point. Who knows.”

“So did you,” Clarice said, aware of the sharpness at the edges of her words. “By their estimation.”

Crawford nodded again. “And so did I.”

“I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but, maybe you should consider following Chilton’s lead, sir. At least until the heat dies down.”

“If they come for me, they come. I’ve put them away before and I’ll do it again. I’m not going to run from Lecter and Graham.”

“If somebody took my baby away and put me in a cage, I’d come for them, too. And I wouldn’t stop until I got my seven pounds of flesh.” Clarice sighed. “Why did you do it? And don’t tell me that you had to do, because we both know you didn’t. So, just, please – just tell me why all this happened.”

She didn’t expect an answer, but after a moment, he spoke again. Slowly, and clearly.

“I always walked the line with Will Graham, from the first case to the last. I know that, and I still live with that decision. But I only did what I did because I believed that – no matter what I put him through, and no matter what Lecter did to him – he would always come back to himself. Will would make the right choice.”

“Until he didn’t.”

“I failed to anticipate how much he loved Lecter, and just what he would do to protect that love. That’s on me. I have to live with that.”

“Were you saving Emilia from her parents?” Clarice asked. “Or were you punishing Will Graham for betraying you?”

Crawford paused, then took another drink. “I thought I knew. Now I’m not so sure.”

They said nothing else, and finished the near-empty bottle in silence.

II.

From the moment Emilia found herself securely in her fathers’ care, she was wide awake. When Emilia was awake, she was wherever her fathers were: doing whatever they did, demanding to be part of every conversation, and insisting to be picked up and held. To be the center of their attentions, just as she had always been _before_. This was now _afte_ r, as her longing for the family that lived in the little white house melted away. _After_ was warm and soft, where the need for the parents she had grown to accept was steadily replaced by the tactile recollection that came of being held in strong arms, or nuzzling against a whiskered cheek.

Emilia was wide awake, like a tiny hurricane of grasping fingers and snorting laughter, until she wasn’t. Then the toddler finally, and with only feeble protesting, succumbed to rest. She resigned herself to sleep between her fathers in the enormous hotel bed, wedged in the spaces afforded by bumping elbows and brushing knees. Emilia slept deeply and dreamlessly, with Hannibal on one side and Will on the other, as though nothing had ever changed.

Will watched his husband and daughter both sleep, long after dark when nightmares liked to give chase. It was still difficult not to hear clanking steel whenever he closed his eyes, and the endless hum of fluorescent lights that flickered blindingly whenever shut on or off. If the strain of confinement still troubled Hannibal, he didn’t dare let it show, and fell asleep as surely as Emilia had. Emilia, who laid curled against her father’s chest; and Hannibal, who slept with his arm wrapped around her protectively. To keep her there, close and safe.

For it, Will smiled. He tucked a loose strand of Emilia’s hair behind her ear. She roused, if only just, to rub her cheek against the crook of Hannibal’s arm and settle back into sleep. Despite Will’s best efforts, Hannibal stirred awake and opened his eyes to meet Will’s gaze. He kissed Will first, leaning carefully over Emilia, before pressing his lips to the crown of her head to kiss her hair.

“Memory is the said to be the guardian to all things. Yet of all the memories that I have treasured during the year that we spent without our daughter, this is the one that I find I took the most for granted,” Hannibal said, gazing affectionately on Emilia’s prone coil. Her two little arms were locked around his own at the wrist, discouraging any inclination to escape. “The moments of silence when she sleeps between us. The way her skin smells, and her hair.”

Will nodded. For once, he didn’t require Hannibal’s sharper senses to appreciate the moment at hand. Emilia’s hair still smelled of the shampoo from her bath, a soft and vaguely floral scent; her skin smelled of clean laundry from the new pajamas he’d dressed her in afterwards. It was startling how easily they fell into the rhythm of their routines, from _before_. How ready she was to trust them again, expecting to be carried around from room to room. Expecting to be played with and fed, bathed and dressed, as though they’d never been apart.

“I can still recall with absolute clarity,” Hannibal continued, “the last books I was reading to her in Paris before we fled. She was enthralled by her fairytales, and despised her counting books.”

“We were reading _The Very Hungry Caterpillar_ for the fifteenth time,” said Will, and laughed softly. “She decided her favorite color was green, so that’s all she ever wanted to read. We would end up arguing every time I tried to pick another book.”

Hannibal paused, then looked at Will and said, “When we’ve finished here, we’ll disappear. All of us, and we won’t be found a second time. I won’t allow it.”

Will swallowed. “Where?”

“Wherever you wish to go, my love, and wherever we can best keep her safe.”

“There won’t be anyone left who wants to see us found.” Distractedly, Will brushed the backs of his fingers along Emilia’s warm cheek. “Before we go, I want to square our debts.”

“Yes.” Hannibal nodded. “The trainee has done our family a kindness, at great risk to herself. We must see to it that that kindness doesn’t go unrecognized.”

III.

Catherine Baker Martin waited in the quiet and hateful dark. It swarmed behind her eyelids, filling her head and ribcage with the awful, deafening roar of silence. She didn’t know how long she had been down there; time had no privilege in the well’s endless night. She only knew that she had washed twice, and covered herself in lotion that made her skin soft under the itchy, awkward quilted suit.

She also knew that he captor would appear sometimes, at the mouth of the well, in the dark. When her captor thought Catherine was asleep, and she would stare at Catherine’s body. Catherine couldn’t see much, but she knew when she was being watched. She knew the weight of eyes on her skin, like hot hands under her clothes – touching her in every way she didn’t want to be touched.

Upstairs, Catherine heard footsteps through the floor. It was the kitchen overhead; she knew this by the sound of pipes and running water, like a sink, maybe a dishwasher. The dog ran around and barked, scratching its little paws on the floor. Her captor spoke, in a sing-songing warble, “Hush, baby. Mommy will be back, and she’ll get you some breakfast then.”

It must have been morning. Sometimes her captor left and the house was silent for hours at a time, except for the dog. The sound of footsteps retreating and wood creaking told Catherine that her captor was leaving again. She focused on the sound of her breathing to measure the passage of time. The sound of a car engine somewhere far away meant it was now safe.

The little dog walked around in the kitchen, sniffing and whining. It was rattling something, maybe a bowl or a food can. Scratching, snuffling, then barking, loud and clear. A cone of light cut across the darkness to light up the space over the mouth of the well. This was when Catherine realized the dog had nosed open the door and was down in the basement, chasing mice or insects as it did whenever her captor was gone.

Down in the blackness, Catherine felt the ground for one of the chicken bones that littered the floor. Her captor occasionally threw food scraps down for her, just enough to keep Catherine from succumbing to the weakness of starvation. The bone had only a little meat and gristle left on it; it took everything she had not to gobble it up. Instead she put it in her mouth to warm it, ignoring the taste of dirt and cartilage. She stood, feeling dizzy, and once the vertigo passed grasped for the string attached to her waste bucket.

The string was stretched thin and fraying where she gripped it, testing its elasticity. Catherine pulled it taut against the lip of the well and began to swing it back and forth so that it dragged against the concrete. Back and forth in a wide sway of her arm, over and over until she shoulder ached in the socket. Finally, the string gave with a pop and the bucket dropped to the bottom of the well. Carefully, and with shaking hands, she tied the bone to the string just above the bucket. Then she tied the frayed end to her wrist, took the bucket by the handle, and threw it straight up toward the light.

_Get the dog,_ Catherine thought. _Get the goddamn dog. Then that bitch will want to talk to me._

The first time she threw it, the bucket bounced off the side of the well and back. And again, and again, until it finally landed. Above, Precious was scampering through the dark on the hunt for mice, nosing around the corners where mice often skittered about. Catherine’s voice echoing across the basement made her jump.

“Prec-iiiiious! Come here, Precious!”

The little dog barked. Her fat, fluffy body shook as she furiously wagged her tail at the sound. A wet, kissing sound made her curious, following it to the edge of the well. Another wet smacking noise, like eating coming from the bottom of the well, made her ears perk up. The poodle could smell the chicken bone and the warm meat still clinging to it attached to the bucket. Catherine called for her again sweetly.

Precious pranced over on her tiny paws, whining at the smell. She barked twice then pounced on the bone to grip it in her teeth. The bucket moved, inching away from the dog and taking the bone with it. Precious growled and clamped down harder on the bone. Suddenly the bucket was yanked forcefully as Catherine pulled on the string, trying to scoop the dog up and pull her down with it. Precious scrambled away with a yelp and ran up the stairs toward the kitchen above.

Down in the bottom of the well, Catherine’s frustrated tears streamed hotly down her face. Surely, she knew, this was how she would die.

IV.

Clarice hadn’t yet properly slept when she found Adrelia waiting for her after class. Her brain was swimming in the gritty details of _Chimel versus California_ , _Schneckloth versus Bustamonte_ , and the _Katz Principle_ for Friday’s upcoming exam. The only sleep she had since she woke up in handcuffs was the two-hour nap she managed on the plane that morning. Clarice never made it back to their dorm after her stop at Crawford’s office, instead heading straight to classes. Ardelia, leaning against the wall outside the doorway, looked like she hadn’t slept, either.

Clarice took a deep breath. Ardelia feigned a smile and tucked a flyaway piece of hair behind her ear as their classmates shuffled by down the hallway.

“You were lucky to miss the PE exam,” Ardelia said from a safe distance. “That Kim Won ran us right into the ground. It was a disaster.”

Once the hallway cleared, Ardelia took step long strides forward to keep Clarice from slipping away with the others. Clarice could tell by the fraught, angry way Ardelia regarded her that this was going to be a confrontation. They hadn’t really had any of those yet, and she didn’t know what to do. Then those hurt feelings waned, and Ardelia sighed.

“You said you would come back last night.”

“I got in this morning,” Clarice said, stubbornly checking over her shoulder to make sure they were alone. “I just wasn’t ready to see you yet.”

“Why not?”

“Because I didn’t know what to say.”

“Did you think I wanted an explanation? Or that I’d be mad?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why _don’t_ you know?”

When Clarice didn’t answer, Ardelia sighed again. She took another step to close the space between them to stand overtly – paralyzingly – close. Clarice swallowed.

Finally, Ardelia said, “Then just tell me what happened.”

They ended up in a bar in town, at a small sticky table with two draft beers in front of them. Clarice didn’t want to speak yet, so Ardelia did it for her.

“Did he hurt you?”

“No.”

“Did he threaten you?”

“No.”

Ardelia looked startled by her own thoughts, but put voice to them regardless. “Did he…assault you?”

“No.” Clarice flinched at the thought. More so at the implication that Will Graham would ever – _could ever_ – than the thought that he had. “Of course not.”

“Well, shit, Clarice – you’re scaring me here. Okay? Last I know, you were going to tie up some loose ends on Crawford’s case, then I find out in a text message that you’ve been taken hostage and driven to the middle of god-knows-where. I find out in a text message from Bobby goddamn Lowrence, because nobody knows to call me and you don’t think to, either.”

Tears pearled in the corners of Ardelia’s eyes. They pearled in Clarice’s too as she watched Ardelia dry her eyes with the blade of her thumb, careful not to smudge her mascara.

“And when you do finally come back, you won’t see me, and you won’t tell me why. Well, that’s bush-league, Clarice Starling, and you know that. So you better tell me what happened, or I swear to god, Clarice. I swear to god.”

Leaning forward, Clarice took Adelina’s hands and clasped them between her own. “I’m afraid to tell you, Ardelia – I’m scared shitless here, okay? But it’s got nothing to do with you.”

“Why are you scared?”

The thought of blood on wolf fur made Clarice’s stomach tighten. “Because I did something I can’t make up for. Not ever.”

“What could you have possibly done?”

Clarice squeezed Ardelia’s fine-boned hands, long and lovely as they were, then said, “Lecter and Graham had a daughter. It wasn’t in the casefiles because Crawford hid her and kept her off the record. That was what they were leveraging for – they wanted to find their baby. So…that’s what I did.”

“You found their daughter?” Ardelia shook her head. “I always pegged Crawford as shady, but not like this.”

“I found their baby, and I told them where her foster family lived, and – and I knew they would get out. Okay? I knew they would find a way because they’ve both done it before, and because they promised they would. But I didn’t…I didn’t try…”

The words stuck in Clarice’s throat like a bone swallowed wrong. She pulled back to push away the tears before they threatened to betray her. Fail her. Ardelia could only watch.

“I did what I had to. To get information out of them – to find Catherine Martin. But that family is out there, and I turned those two loose on them. That blood is on my hands, Ardelia, and now Catherine might not even be found. I killed that family, and it was all for nothing.”

Ardelia sat silent. Eventually, she said, “Clarice, look at me.

Clarice’s gaze wavered before it settled on Ardelia’s face.

“You were lied to. You did everything you could to follow the books and do the right thing, but you never had a chance. Jack Crawford put that family in danger – not you.”

“I could’ve warned the family. I could’ve done something.”

“You were doing everything you could think of to save a girl’s life and fix his mistakes.”

“I feel culpable. Like this crime is my crime.”

Red on white. White fur. White teeth.

“You remember when we met? On the first day?” Ardelia asked. “When I found you in the hallway before class, trying to cram for search procedures so you were prepared?”

After a moment, Clarice nodded.

“You know I don’t trust easy, okay?’ I’ve worked too hard to get sidetracked by relationships. So when I saw you – sitting there on the floor, chewing on a pen, looking all stupid and eager – I knew you were smart. I knew you were ambitious, and you cared about the work. And if I didn’t think you were a good person, Clarice, I wouldn’t have wanted this. Because I still want this, regardless of what you think you’ve done.”

They kissed, then. Clarice leaned forward to cup Adrelia’s face in her hands and kiss her mouth. Softly, sweetly, like letting out a long-held breath. When her phone rang in her back pocket, Ardelia couldn’t help but laugh.

“I will punch you in the face if you answer that phone, Starling.”

The caller ID read as Unknown Number. Clarice’s stomach fluttered. She hesitated, then pressed _end_. A moment later, a text message appeared.

From: Unknown, 5:04pm

_You kept your word, so I kept mine. The Palmers are safe._

Relief came over Clarice in such a warm, enveloping wave that it threatened to knock off her chair. Once her hand stopped shaking, she typed her response.

From: Clarice, 5:07pm

_Where are you?_

From: Unknown, 5:08pm

_My family and I will soon be visiting a mutual friend._

From: Clarice, 5:09pm

_Crawford?_

From: Unknown, 5:10pm

_Would you try to stop me if it were?_

She swallowed.

From: Clarice, 5:13pm

_I told you how I felt about wolves._

From: Unknown, 5:15pm

_Look at the dump sites again. Don’t they seem desperately random? Like the elaborations of a bad liar?_

From: Clarice, 5:16pm

_Why are you telling me this?_

From: Unknown, 5:17pm

_You were kind when you had no reason to be._

Before Clarice could respond, a photo appeared in the thread. It was of Emilia, sitting in a dress – green, not pink – under a tree and clean sunlight. She looked happy. She looked safe.

_Goodbye, Clarice._

V.

“Are you ready, Precious?”

Jessica Grant sat propped up on a mountain of pillows, her little dog curled up in her lap. She was shower-fresh and stretched out on the bed, hair drying in the towel wrapped around her head and dressed in her favorite nightgown. The poodle cuddled close under the hand stroking her soft fur. Rummaging through the sheets, Jessica found the remote for the DVD/VCR player and pressed _play_.

“Okay, here we go.”

The tape in the VHS deck popped and whined. It was grainy, washed out on the screen where the edges fuzzed in streaks. This was one of Jessica Grant’s most treasured possessions, rescued from her grandmother’s house where she found it in a water-damaged box under the stairs. Amid the box’s contents of old home movies and shows taped off the TV, there had been a single cassette with a scrawling, handwritten label: _Miss Sacramento, 1981_.

Jessica watched it every day whenever she was making vital preparations, and she watched it just before she harvested a hide. It was a comforting ritual. It always made her feel happy and bright.

On her small TV across the room, the quarter-finals of the Miss Sacramento contest, one of the many preliminary events on the road to the splendor of the Miss America pageant. This was the swimsuit competition. All the girls wore tasteful, vibrantly-colored bikinis and carried bouquets of flowers as they came up the wide staircase in a neat file to the stage above. Each of the contestants were a dazzling example of ‘80s glamor, with big hair and bold makeup. Some of them were lovely and well-proportioned, but most were too thin. Unrefined. Shapely but lacking proper fat and musculature.

Jessica squeezed Precious in anticipation, her fingers gripping the poodle’s fur. The dog didn’t flinch. She was used to the ritual.

“Precious, here she comes. Here she comes, here she comes.”

And there she came: approaching the stairs in her white swimsuit and kittenish heel, a springtime bouquet in hand. Tall, statuesque, possessing a radiant smile and full, bouncy brown hair. She had no scars, no freckles or burns to mark her milky shoulders or long, perfect thighs. Mom. There was Mom. When she smiled at the judges, Jessica smiled, too.

“There she is, Precious,” Jessica cooed and snuggled her dog close to herself. “And when we’re done, Mommy will be perfect just like her. Yes, she will, baby, yes, she will!”

The tape stopped. The television switched to a blue screen. Jessica rewound the tape and started it over.

VI.

The FBI placed Frederick Chilton in protective custody as the manhunt began for Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham. It was less about his safety and more to do with securing his testimony as a witness, should they be caught. The FBI and U.S. Marshalls were combing the highway routes leading out of Tennessee and monitoring all international flights in the surrounding states. The empty platitudes did nothing to calm Chilton’s nerves, well-aware of how quickly and easily law enforcement could be dealt with where Lecter and Graham were concerned. God knew how easily they had respectively dispatched the twelve staff members at the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane and the three officers from the Tennessee Department of Corrections.

After all, they had made it very clear that, regardless of where they were going, Chilton would be one of the first stops on their itinerary. Lecter assured him of as much when he vowed to unstitch the seams of Chilton’s skin grafts piece by piece while Graham watched. Chilton had no intention of waiting around to see if the old Lithuanian still kept his promises.

Two severe, plain-looking agents arrived to escort him from Memphis and put him on the first flight out to St. Louis, Missouri. It was already dark when his flight touched down. There he was picked up by two more agents for the local field office, to be held in the Marcus Hotel until such a time as it was safe to be released. This was only temporary; he would play along with the protective detail while the heat was on, then slip away. Somewhere warm, Chilton decided. Warm and sunny, and far away from here.

The agents in St. Louis were as strict and bland as the last. They shadowed him through the hotel lobby, up the elevator, and to room 302. His room was a rambling suite, elegantly laid out with a bank of tall windows overlooking McArthur Bridge. The agents stood posted at the door to leave him to his suite, and on the other side of the locked door, Chilton released a long and heavy sigh.

He wanted a long bath, a stiff drink, and a delicious meal. He wanted to begin putting this entire ordeal behind him, and think about the future. His professional reputation was in shambles; he knew that all too well. Lecter made sure of that when he gleefully slashed his way through the asylum, and Graham finished the job when he humiliated Chilton in front of Senator Martin, the Memphis field office, and the national press. But he could start over, in another country. Under a new name.

Chilton poured a drink for himself, with hands still tremulous at the thought of a scalpel peeling back his skin. He paced the suite, looking out the half-drawn windows onto the city below. St. Louis glowed in the dark, twinkling in bright specks of neon light. He drank until his hands stopped shaking, then he fell asleep on the sofa. When he awoke, he checked his watch. It was after midnight. Then he checked his pocket for his phone, and huffed at the realization that he’d left it in the rented car.

A call to the front desk went unanswered. Chilton peered out of his door to find one of the agents still posted outside; the other slept in the next room. They took shifts. He was relieved by that, but Agent Lowry’s insistence that he follow Chilton downstairs felt a little patronizing nonetheless. The silent elevator opened to a similarly silent lobby, as but a few guests ambled between the entrance and the front desk.

In the empty parking structure, Chilton unlocked the black SUV with the digital key and the headlights flashed with a beep of the alarm. It was parked between a silver sedan and a blue hatchback. They had only just made it to the SUV when they realized they weren’t alone, as Agent Lowry suddenly gurgled on a pained yelp. The knife that slid between his ribs punctured a lung, shrinking his cry for help into a bloody gasp for air. The stab of the needle in Chilton’s neck confirmed his awful, inky black suspicions as he found himself shoved into the SUV’s now-opened cargo hatch, toppling in on unsure legs.

When his vision cleared, he found Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham on either side of the hatch. They studied him keenly, like cats watching a caged bird. He couldn’t move to save himself as the sedatives sapped his strength. He couldn’t move at all.

“What shall we do with him, my love?” asked Hannibal sweetly. “As ever, I defer to your satisfaction – after all, it was your face he insulted.”

Will considered his response with a cant of his head, then answered, “Let’s start at the bottom and work our way up.”

“As you wish.”

Hannibal closed the hatch, leaving Chilton to darkness.


	11. The First

I.

“Bad liar.”

Clarice Starling stared at a map of the Great Lakes, spread open on the floor of the dorm she shared with Ardelia Mapp. She stood at one corner while Ardelia sat cross-legged across from her, each studying the map’s geography. Each of the dumpsites were marked in red ink, beside the date and the name. On the corner of the map, Clarice had written, in black ink and bullet point: _Desperately random? Bad liar? Check the sites?_ Her personal notes and casefiles were arranged around the map in a scatter of crime scene photos and reports. There was a pattern amid the chaos and noise, the false flags and backtracking. Will Graham said there would be, because Hannibal Lecter knew there was. She just had to find it.

Daylight was coming through the windows, after a night of combing through notes and succumbing to fits of broken sleep. The morning was dawning on Catherine Martin’s last day. Clarice knew this with cold certainty.

What could Will Graham have meant? There was no knowing what either he or Lecter knew, or what they were lying about. But why would he lie? They had gotten what they wanted – their daughter and their freedom. Lying to her now would have been petty, cruel, and useless. And when everything they did had a purpose, it would be out of character of them to play games without stakes or rules.

“Okay.” Clarice ran a hand through her hair, shaking out the mental cobwebs to focus her thoughts. “The dumpsites are desperately random, like a bad liar. What did he mean by that?”

From her seat on the floor, Ardelia let her fingers walk across the map by date and location. “There’s no pattern that I can see. Here an abduction, there a dump. Here the second abduction, there a dump. Here the third abduction, and there –”

Clarice shook her head. “But these dates are backwards. Or, no – no, they’re scrambled. Because the second body was discovered first.”

Ardelia shuffled through the reports and matched them with their corresponding crime scene photos. “The body of the second woman was found first, floating in the Wabash River in downtown Lafayette, Indiana.”

“The first woman reported missing was taken from Belvedere, Ohio, but she wasn’t found ‘til much later in the Blackwater River in Missouri. The body was weighed down – none of the others were weighted down like that.”

“Yeah, Fredrica Bimmel. But why go through all the trouble?” asked Ardelia. “She hides the first body, then dumps the others off upstream from cities where they’ll be easily found. What’s so special about this one?”

 “What did Graham say?” Clarice thought aloud. “She’s jealous of what these women have. She…”

_She wants to be perfect._

“She covets,” Ardelia supplied from Clarice’s notes.

“And we covet what we want, what we see,” said Clarice. She began to pace around the map. “We covet what we see every day.”

“So she started with Bimmel, in Ohio.”

“Maybe she saw this girl every day. Maybe she didn’t plan to kill her, or killed her spontaneously, or just – was just getting a taste for it. So she hid the body, then grabbed another one further from home. Refined her methods, stopped being sloppy.”

_That’s when she figured out what she wanted with the skin_ , Clarice could hear Will say, as though he were in the room with them. Seated in the chair, reading through her notes. It occurred to her then, and with some reluctance, that Crawford had been right about this. You work on a case long enough – think about a killer long enough – you get a feel for them. She wondered who she was feeling more: Jessica, or Will.

Clarice chose not to answer that for herself.

“Bad liar.” Ardelia nodded as she shuffled through the casefiles again. “It makes sense. But what can we do? We call this in as a tip from two serial killers and we’ll get laughed out of the academy.”

Clarice pushed her bangs out of her face with a sigh. “And nobody wants to hear about a hunch from a couple of trainees.”

Today was the last day of Catherine Martin’s life. After a moment, Clarice’s stomach fluttered, and she decided what they would do before she said it.

“I have an idea, but you won’t like it.”

“I haven’t been a huge fan of your ideas so far,” Ardelia said with a smirk.

“We go to Ohio, and we try to figure out how she’s picking them. Maybe that way we can stop this from happening again.”

After a moment, Ardelia nodded. “Then we go to Ohio.”

II.

Frederick Chilton woke to _Dido’s Lament_ coming softly from the next room, and the realization that his left leg throbbed at the knee.

The chemical fog that had enveloped him lifted. This placed him at the end of a long table in a sprawling dining room, the lights turned low on the chandelier overhead, an IV drip embedded in his arm. Feeding him fluids. When his senses returned, he realized he was seated in a wheelchair, his limbs still heavy with sedation. He still had his skin, for which he felt a fleeting wave of relief. He was also dressed in a different suit than he had last remembered putting on this morning, his black three-piece exchanged for a white button-up and gray waistcoat with slacks to match.

_No, not this morning_ , he realized. His leg still burned, but looking down at the blanket across his lap, he saw that it had been severed below the knee. A black, oily panic reached up to capture Chilton at the sight, pulling back the blanket with shaking fingers to confirm that it had been amputated, cleaned, and dressed in bandages. He breathed through it, the horror and the fear. He focused, then pulled the needle from his arm to disconnect the IV.

Fueled by fight-or-flight, Chilton began to wheel himself away from the table. Out of the dining room and into the long, wide hallway beyond it. It was lined with doorways to other rooms; there he saw a doorway to the sitting room, warmed by the crackle of the hearth and decked with opulent wooden furnishings. Through it, the stained glass double doors that led outside, streetlight glimmering faintly off the decorative pane. Quickly he changed course, wheeling into the sitting room to make a bid for escape.

The sounds of talking gave him sudden pause as he realized he had been caught.

On the other side of the sofa, on the floor in front of the fireplace, were Will and Emilia. The pair sat together on a plush Persian rug, amid a scatter of the child’s toys and stuffed animals. They were putting together a puzzle when Emilia turned her attention to Chilton’s appearance, leveling him a big, curious stare. She gathered herself up from the floor, holding the edges of her black-and-green tulle skirt as she approached him.

“Hello, Frederick,” said Will. He leaned back on outstretched palms to watch his daughter’s cautious trek across the room. “I trust you’re rested up.”

The child studied Chilton closely with a canine tilt of her head. For it, Chilton learned away, unsure of how to respond. Will chuckled softly and, to Chilton’s ears, with a certain measure of smug disdain.

“She won’t bite you, Frederick. And don’t tell me you’re afraid of cooties.”

Chilton swallowed. “This is…?”

“Our daughter,” Will answered. “Say hello to Frederick, Emilia.”

“Hi,” Emilia peeped softly, with eyes as big as saucers.

“Oh,” Chilton said. “I see.”

Chilton held his breath as Emilia came close. She then broke their locked stare with an affected bark and growl. He flinched and immediately regretted it as she laughed, tottering off to the doorway behind him.

“You mustn’t torture our guest, duckling,” said Hannibal as the toddler hugged him at the knee. “It’s terribly rude.”

Emilia chirped as Hannibal picked her up, tickling her while she giggled and squirmed. He sat on the sofa beside Chilton’s wheelchair and bounced the delighted toddler on one knee. Chilton’s initial dread waned into sick resignation at the reality of his circumstances, the front door taunting him in his peripheral.

“I’m afraid she’s quite precocious,” Hannibal said brightly. “And she’s picked up her father’s tendency to bite, despite my best efforts to curb that particular habit.”

“I find your willingness to throw me under the bus appalling, Hannibal,” Will interjected as he stood from the floor. “Especially in front of company.”

“It isn’t disingenuous if it’s true, my love.”

“You two…procreated,” Chilton remarked, if only to acknowledge the situation at hand. Then he nodded and said, “Of course you did. Mazel tov, I suppose.”

“Thank you,” said Hannibal. He patted Emilia’s back before setting her down on the floor. “Go on with your father, darling. You have to wash up. Dinner’s almost ready.”

Emilia held up a hand expectantly for Will to take, letting him lead her to the bathroom down the hall to wash hands.  Hannibal watched them leave, smiling fondly. Chilton found himself a bit sick as Hannibal’s gaze returned to him.

“There are only two lasting legacies we can hope to pass on to our children: one is roots, the other, wings,” Hannibal said. “Emilia was without us for a year of her life – a year without roots to grow from while we were confined to our cells. Confinement my family can suffer, but cruelty, Frederick, is another matter altogether.”

“Do I have to ask what’s for dinner?”

“No.”

“Of course.” A broken, trembling laughter bubbled out of Chilton at that. “I suppose I should have seen that coming, as well.”

“I once sampled a taste of your lip, courtesy of Francis Dolarhyde. It would be a pity to allow you to die without savoring the rest of you.”

“But you have your freedom – and your family, Hannibal. Certainly no one wants to see you out of my hospital more than me. Couldn’t we come to some kind of understanding?”

“We had no desire to call you to our table, Frederick,” said Hannibal. “Distasteful though you may be, that place was reserved for Jack Crawford. But you chose to be petty.”

“I didn’t understand the circumstances. Had I known—”

“You hurt the only other person as dear to me as my own child. I can’t abide such a cruel and ugly act.”

Chilton swallowed again. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth as though affixed with paste. “Do you still plan to skin me?”

Hannibal smiled. “Oh, yes. But not until after the baby goes to bed, and we still haven’t even eaten dinner yet.”

III.

Crawford came out of his office and found Clarice Starling in the hallway waiting for him. Arms crossed over her chest, looking worried and determined. Ardelia Mapp stood nearby. Before he could ask, Clarice spoke for the both of them.

“I have reason to believe the skinner’s working out of Belvedere, Ohio. Where the first victim was found.”

“You know the case is out of our hands, Starling,” he reminded her. “You should go back to class.”

“Sir, I think it goes back to Fredrica Bimmel. That’s where the skinner started, and I think that’s where you’ll find her.”

Crawford studied Clarice, deliberating.  “Why?”

“We went back through the casefile and took another look at the dumpsites. It’s too random. Bimmel’s the only one who was weighed down – she threw off the whole timeline.”

“Where is all this coming from?”

_Mention Graham?_ she thought. _No._

“She started with Bimmel, then she got comfortable. Just like Lecter and Graham said in my interviews with them. She figured out her pattern. It makes sense. Send me.”

He looked at Ardelia, then back to Clarice. “Send you where?”

“To Ohio.”

“Starling—”

“Sir, you sent me to get a feel for this one – to get a feel for Catherine Martin. Let me go to Ohio and get a feel for Fredrica Bimmel,” Clarice said. “If Catherine Martin’s dead, fine, but all we got left is to find out how the skinner chooses them. How she hunts. I’m close to her now and you know that. Send me.”

“Will Graham got close, too.”

“I’d say me and Will differ on a few things, sir. The first of which being that I want to see this skinner behind bars.”

“You ready to accept a recycle, Starling?”

“Yes.”

“Six months of your life, probably. You’ll have to start over.”

Clarice took a deep breath and nodded. Crawford nodded in turn.

“You’d start with Bimmel, then what?”

“Talk to her family, her neighbors. Then move onto Kimberly Emberg, the one we found. The one I saw. Try to figure out how Jessica is choosing them.”

“Travel’s by reimbursement, Starling. Can you manage that?”

“I’ll cover her,” Ardelia said. “Sir.”

“Good.” Crawford nodded again. “Then go. Just to the first one, the Bimmel girl. Then you call me.”

Clarice’s chest swelled. She let out a breathless, “Yes, sir,” and then she and Ardelia spun on their heels to make the next flight out.

IV.

Will sat on the veranda of the townhouse, settled on the edge of the chaise lounge with Emilia in his lap. She dozed lightly against him, a collection of loose limbs and tussled hair. Her fingers were still wrapped around his shirt buttons from when she had sleepily plucked at them and babbled, firm in her efforts to avoid bedtime. The book he’d been reading to her was set aside on the end of the chaise; he overlooked the city below, where people strolled the boulevard by the yellow glow of street-light. The shops and cafes that lined the lively boulevard were bright and clean through their windows, opening to commonplace scenes of shopping or drinking coffee and tea.

It was a calm night. The air smelled like that of a well lived-in city, pleasant with the faint scenes of fresh cut grass and food from the kitchens of restaurants and bakeries. It reminded Will of Paris, and quiet nights spent with his family. These scenes provided a sense of safety within the walls of his memory palace; now their necessity faded away, to be replaced by new memories and new rooms to house them.

This was where Hannibal found them: perched on the chaise, Emilia’s head tucked under Will’s chin, Will’s arms propping her in place. Hannibal took the open space behind them on the lounge, folding Will into his embrace. He pressed his lips to Will’s neck, first to kiss the bare skin above his shirt collar, then to breathe in the smell of his hair. Will suppressed the urge to shiver, warm though the sensation was.

“Has she finally given up the struggle?” Hannibal asked of Emilia, who shifted to nuzzle closer to her father’s whiskered chin.

Will chuckled softly. “It was a valiant battle against the forces of bedtime. I’ll be inside to put her to bed in a minute.”

“No need.” Hannibal tilted his head thoughtfully. “Poetry happens when an emotion finds it thought, and when a thought has found its words.”

“I haven’t been composing poetry.”

“No, but you’ve been thinking. Your brow always furrows when you have something on your mind, and your brow is quite creased at the moment.”

“How’s our guest?”

“Sedated, for now. But I’m far more interested in hearing what you’ve been thinking about.”

Will leaned back against Hannibal with a sigh. “I’ve been thinking about where we’ll go next, once we’ve finished.”

“What do you want?”

“A house, and some land. For dogs, and just to tend to. I want to teach Emilia what I know.”

“Teach her to fish? To sail?”

“Yes.”

“And to hunt?”

Will paused, then nodded. “In time. When she’s ready.”

“A quiet place, then, to put down the roots Jack Crawford tried to sever. In time an ancestral place, too, for Emilia to look back on fondly as a place where we taught her the knowledge we had to pass on.” Hannibal kissed Will’s temple, then rested his chin on Will’s shoulder. “It would be fitting for her, I think, to be sheltered from the din and the suffering this has caused us all.”

“I just want her to be free of this,” Will said. “Of being used against us, like a pawn, or a poker chip.”

“She will be, my love. We will raise her and protect her, and one day all of this will just be a memory to her. To all of us.”

Will’s mouth lifted in a smile. “You sound certain.”

“I am certain.”

“How obnoxious.”

“Always.”

V.

The sun was setting on Catherine Martin’s last day. Through the wide bank of windows that wrapped around the airport, the sky was pink and orange, obscuring the sun behind a thin cloud line. Clarice felt like sleeping, bone-tired as she was in the airport chairs, waiting on Flight NK 191 to Columbus, Ohio. Whenever she closed her eyes, she saw Catherine Martin being swallowed by darkness. She saw blood and metal, and blood on teeth.

Even for it, Clarice dozed off for forty minutes, lulled by the chill of recycled air and the soft chatter of the waiting area. After forty minutes spent dreaming of blood and blackness, she woke to find Ardelia beside her, reading a book. Ardelia looked up, closed her book, and laced their fingers together on the armrest between them.

“You okay?”

Clarice nodded and scrubbed the sleep from her eyes. “Yeah. Just tired. And – you know.”

“Yeah.” Ardelia smiled gently. “You’re doing the right thing, Starling.”

“I know.”

“And if they try to recycle you, I’ll fight them.”

Clarice laughed. “Thanks, I appreciate it.”

“Hey. When they catch her, it’ll be because of you.”

“You helped me.”

“Yeah, and you bet I’ll lord that over you for the rest of your life. But you finished this. They can’t afford to throw you away over a couple of exams. Alright?”

Swallowing, Clarice nodded. “Alright.”

Within the hour, they would be on a plane bound for Ohio. In the morning, they would fund Fredrica Bimmel’s family and try to figure out why she was taken away from them. By then, Catherine Martin would likely be dead.

VI.

Down in the deep black darkness, Catherine Baker Martin sat awake at the bottom of the well. She listened in on the noise of the house above, her fingers pressed to the smooth concrete to feel for vibrations. She didn’t sleep. She didn’t cry. She couldn’t afford to do either anymore.

Instead, she _waited_.


	12. The Last

I.

A quick web search confirmed that Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham were back on the FBI’s Most Wanted list, after a lengthy absence. Eleven murders to their names, they were considered violent and extremely dangerous. This would make travel difficult, but not altogether impossible.

Hannibal was prepared for this eventuality when he was still active in Baltimore, long before Will Graham sauntered into his life with all the promise of a tragedy. In the wall of a vacation cottage on the banks of the Susquehanna River were the credit cards and credentials of another identity, including a passport. The passport would be expired by now, but it could be renewed quickly. Making arrangements for Will and Emilia would take more time and effort, but this wasn’t impossible, either, even on such short notice.

Fortunately, they had a window, however brief, of time. Jack Crawford and the FBI were racing around for straws to grasp onto, while Clarice Starling was likely off to Ohio to catch Jessica Grant. Clarice, who judged herself with the same mercy as the dungeon scales at Threave. She had earned the favor for her kindness, even if it came at the cost of Jessica’s life. Jessica had been such a fascinating creature, after all, but his fondness and professional courtesy only extended so far wherever his family was concerned.

By now, the FBI had likely already found whatever was left of Frederick Chilton. Trying to piece him back together would surely keep them busy. He was still mostly in one, salvageable piece when Hannibal last saw him, left outside the emergency room with a letter to Jack Crawford and a recipe for dried venison pinned to his shirt. Hannibal found the choice in recipe fitting, even if his gallows humor earned rolled eyes from Will.

For the moment, this evening in another rented suite was better spent catching up on his correspondence, and his reading. First, Hannibal sent Barney a sincere thank-you note for his many courtesies at the hospital. Then he penned some anonymous corrections to the New York Times for an article they had run in the Sunday edition. Several misquotes and mischaracterizations about his and his husband’s respective cases needed to be corrected, if only for the sake of the public record. A certain measure of hyperbole about his own unique pathology Hannibal could abide (and sometimes help to embellish, depending on the context), but flagrant lies about his husband’s law enforcement history were unspeakably ugly.

Briefly, Hannibal considered signing his own name to them, but Will would be cross with him for it. Instead, he settled on anonymity, and to let his readers ponder his authorship. It could be more entertaining that way.

As for his reading, he settled in the sitting room with his tablet to read the day’s headlines. _Bach’s Two- and Three-Part Inventions_ played softly on the radio. Emilia was busy amusing herself with her coloring books and crayons, spread out on the rug in front of the sofa and content to ignore him. Will was already asleep when Hannibal pulled a blanket over him in bed, where he dozed off with a book. Retreating to the other side of the townhouse with Emilia, seated by the dim hearth, family wasn’t allowed to stray far from Hannibal’s thoughts.

Will came padding down the hallway and into the sitting room just after 7:00. He reflexively gathered up some of Emilia’s mess, then sank into the empty space beside Hannibal on the sofa. With a yawn, he leaned over onto Hannibal, resting his head against Hannibal’s shoulder and closing his eyes.

“You shouldn’t have let me sleep.”

Will dismissed the irony of the statement, although it prompted a soft chuckle from Hannibal. Hannibal, who shifted to accommodate Will, closed an arm around him and looked back to his tablet.

“You needed the rest. We have a long day ahead of us tomorrow.”

“I haven’t slept since Emilia was born. What are you reading?”

“It appears Freddie Lounds will continue to dine on our names for years to come,” Hannibal said, “courtesy of the FBI’s latest manhunt.”

“Christmas must have come early for Freddie,” said Will dryly. “We’re the gift that keeps on giving.”

“As are the Palmers.”

Hannibal passed Will his tablet to read the latest _TattleCrime_ exclusive. Seeing Emilia’s picture on the website’s front page, Will sat up.

“The foster mother recognized you. She chose to sell her story – and, in turn, our daughter’s identity – for a tidy sum.” Hannibal paused. “If we had done what we both agreed needed to be done—”

Will scrolled down the page and shook his head. “I was asked to spare them, Hannibal. I keep my word – and it doesn’t matter now. What’s done is done.”

The article spewed egregious lies under the headline _Murder Family on the Run_. It was interposed by pictures of Emilia taken at the little white house on Finney Road, held by other, lesser parents and dressed in their sheepskin. There was no conclusive evidence of the foster mother’s claims, as Hannibal knew, nor of Emilia’s paternity. Her legal name, Emilia Strand, marked her as a citizen of France, who had gone missing at the same time that he and Will fled Paris for Brussels. Even for it, the American girl Sarah Jane Palmer bore a striking resemblance to Emilia Strand if anyone chose to look into it, and it wouldn’t take much effort to make the connection to their previous aliases.

The uncomfortable reality of Sarah Jane Palmer’s photos on _TattleCrime_ made each of them vulnerable. It made Emilia even more vulnerable than she had ever been, as she sat on the floor amid a scatter of crayons. Coloring in her pictures, blissfully unaware of how much this changed everything.

“I didn’t want her to learn like this,” Will said. “With her face in a tabloid.”

“The swathe you and I have carved extends beyond ourselves, Will,” said Hannibal. “It extends beyond her, too, and she will have to learn to live with the consequences of our actions. That’s the burden all children must suffer for their parents.”

“I wanted to protect her from it, Hannibal. Keep her free of this part of our lives. We owe her a childhood.”

“She will have it. We have nothing to hide from her, about this or anything else to do with our family. You and I knew the day would come when we must tell her of her place in the world. And I feel no inclination to lie to our daughter, even to avoid difficult truths.”

“The truth looks ugly in this light…Feels ugly to speak about.”

“She will know that she is safe and loved, and that her fathers will do whatever is necessary to protect her. This is the only truth that matters.”

Emilia, quietly, continued to color. She didn’t know how much blood had been shed in her name, how many bodies had been buried in order to find her. Now, despite their best efforts, it would most certainly follow her steps for the rest of her life.

But this was the price, Hannibal knew, of raising lions among the lamb.

II.

On the morning of the final day, Jessica Grant was ready to harvest the hide.

She came home from shopping for her supplies, the bags looped at her wrists by their handles. It was difficult to stifle the urge to race down the basement stairs, eager to begin with a flutter in her step and belly alike. In the sewing room on the second floor, she unpacked her bags: new bias seam-binding, panels of stretchy Lycra, and a box of kosher salt. She had forgotten nothing,

In the workroom in the basement, she laid out her knifes on a clean towel beside the long sinks. The knives were four in all, joined by a Strycker autopsy saw. Jessica hardly ever used it, but kept it around, just in case. Time to start the aquarium pumps in her fresh tanks of solution. She poked her red-tipped finger at a nice, little chrysalis buried in the humus in the bottom of the cage. Finally, she retrieved her pistol.

Jessica had learned from each of her previous efforts, some more painfully than others. She was determined to avoid of the nightmares she had gone through before. Do it quickly and cleanly, if at all possible. No matter how weak and docile the material was, they always fought her if she gave them the chance. They were stubborn like that, and stupid.

In the past, she had hunted these young women in the black of the basement using her infrared goggles. It was delightful to watch as they felt around in the dark, scrunching themselves up in the corners for safety. She liked to hunt them with the pistol, because of the sound and satisfying recoil. But they would get disoriented down there, falling down, bumping into things, scraping their skin. It was more trouble than it was worth, a childish waste of time. She was beyond the games now.

Jessica was ready. She would go upstairs now and undress. She would wake up Precious and they would watch the video together, then go to work. Naked in the warm, dark basement. Jessica was almost giddy as got out of her clothes and into her robe, putting on the tape right after.

“Precious! Come here, Precious! C’mon, sweetheart!”

She had to shut Precious up here in the bedroom while she got through the noisy part in the basement. The sound of the gun, and sometimes the screaming right before it, scared Precious terribly. Jessica hated to worry her like that.

“Precious!”

When the little dog didn’t come, Jessica called in the hall. She called again in the kitchen and the basement. When she called at the door to the oubliette room, she finally got an answer.

“She’s down here with me,” shouted Catherine Baker Martin, “you bitch!”

Fear snapped up to consume Jessica first. It rattled through her musculature before it twisted into sickness, and finally rage. She stormed back to the workroom and got her pistol. At the well, the string to the waste bucket was broken. She assumed it had been broken in some absurd attempt to climb out and escape. It had happened before – they had tried every foolish thing imaginable. She leaned over the well, her voice shaking but controlled.

“Precious, are you alright? Answer me, baby!”

Catherine pinched the little dog’s rear end. Precious yelped and bit down on her arm in kind.

“How’s that?”

Jessica felt panicked. “I’ll lower the basket. You’ll put her in.”

“You’ll give me a phone or I’ll have to break her neck,” Catherine called up. “I don’t want to hurt you, and I don’t want to hurt this dog, either. Just get me a phone.”

Jessica brought the pistol up. Catherine saw the muzzle and held the dog over her as a shield. Precious wriggled helplessly, trying to get away.

“You shoot me, bitch, you better kill me quick or I swear to god, I’ll break this dog’s neck.”

“Don’t you touch her, you little bitch!” Jessica screamed. “I’ll blow your goddamn head off!”

“I think her leg’ broken,” Catherine said, trying to shift gears. Trying to control the conversation. “She’s in pain. She hit her leg on the way down – it’s pretty bad. Let us out so I can get her to the vet.”

“You think she’s in pain?” Rage made Jessica’s voice a roar that echoed in the concrete of the well. “You don’t know what pain is! I’ll scald you! I’ll burn you alive!”

When she heard Jessica storm upstairs, Catherine Baker Martin sank down to the bottom of the well, shaken by tremors. She wouldn’t allow herself to cry. Precious crawled into her lap and she hugged the little dog tightly, grateful for the warmth.

III.

Jack Crawford walked down the long and lonely corridor of the Intensive Care Unit, followed only by the echo of his own footsteps.

In an hour, he would be on the phone while the FBI raced to Camulet City, Illinois. He had stepped aside on the skinner case to deal with the Inspector General Office’s investigation of Clarice Starling, her interviews with Lecter and Graham, and the ensuing chaos of their escape. Giving the reins over to the Memphis field office was a matter of professionalism and saving face, even if he was still overseeing the case. This morning, however, a break came in: the serial killer formerly known as Jame Gumb had a juvenile record in California, when she killed her grandparents at the age of twelve. After six years in Tulare Psychiatric, she spent the next decade in and out of trouble with the law before settling in Camulet City long enough to establish a trail.

Customs had paper on the name Jessica Grant when they stopped a suitcase at LAX some years prior. The luggage was coming out of Surinam with live moth pupae inside. It had been addressed to Jessica Grant, care of “Ms. Hide” out of Camulet City, a leather goods shop. The store was now closed, but there were four separate home addresses belonging to either Jame Gumb or Jessica Grant attached to it. They were getting close.

But for now, Crawford walked to ICU room eight. He peered through the glass door at what was left of Frederick Chilton.

“Sorry, Jack. We had to call you in on this one.” Agent Marshall of the local field office met Crawford in a few long, tired strides, a cup of coffee in hand. He let out a sigh. “I know you’re up to your ass with the IGO and this skinner mess, but the note was addressed to you personally.”

Through the glass, Chilton was under chemical sedation inside a cocoon of bandages. His arms and legs were severed below the elbows and knees, making him appear smaller compared to the big white hospital bed that surrounded him.

“Has he been conscious?”

‘No. Doctors aren’t sure if he’s going to make it. His system is wrecked – lost a lot of blood.”

“What happened?” asked Crawford without looking at Marshall. He already knew the answer.

“Your boys picked him up in Grand Rapids. Killed the protective detail in a hotel parking structure, then Chilton was MIA until three hours ago,” Marshall said. “They left him in a wheelchair outside the emergency room with a note addressed to you and a recipe card pinned to his shirt.”

The note read, in Hannibal Lecter’s looping, elegant script:

_To our dear friend Jack Crawford,_

_Please accept this most sincere invitation to join us for dinner, and celebrate the homecoming of Emilia Lecter-Graham._

_Sincerely, H.L._

“His arms and legs were amputated, and he was partially flayed,” continued Marshall. “Like Lecter had a change of heart at the last minute.”

“Change of heart.” Crawford shook his head. He had seen Hannibal Lecter’s heart once before, made out of a dead man. It led him to do all sorts of vicious and terrible things, even when sitting in the palm of Will Graham’s hand. “No. Lecter changed his mind, because he decided this would be more fun than killing him outright.”

After a moment, Marshall sighed again. “What I don’t get is the occasion. Going after Chilton, giving you hell – that makes sense. But who is Emilia?”

Without another word, Crawford retreated down the hospital corridor.

IV.

Fredrica Bimmel’s big, old house sat on a backwater of the Licking River in Belvedere, Ohio. It was a shabby little Rust Belt town east of Columbus, with chewed streets lined by houses with peeling paint and busted shutters. Belvedere was the kind of town where young people ran away from, hungry for anything, anywhere else. A young girl disappearing might not even seem that out of place.

 _Was that why it was so simple for Fredrica Bimmel to be taken?_ Clarice Starling wondered, standing on the cracked asphalt outside the dead girl’s house, Ardelia Mapp at her side. _Is this why Jessica chose her?_

The petty annoyances of the morning hadn’t bothered Clarice much. Her mind had raced on the plane to Columbus, but Ardelia’s presence – steady, composed, unafraid – kept her calm. Not even the confusion and ineptitude at the car rental counter, when Ardelia stepped in to handle it when Clarice’s sleep-deprived brain was too fried, had ruffled her. She knew she had paid a high price for this time in Ohio, and she had to use it as best she could. This entire trek could end at any moment, if Crawford was overruled and they pulled her credentials to send her packing.

Clarice couldn’t afford dwell on Catherine Martin’s final day, either. She had to focus. Stay sharp. To think of Catherine being killed and rendered at any moment, just as Kimberly Emberg and Fredrica Bimmel had been before her, would have just slowed Clarice down.

In the kitchen of Fredrica’s house, with its creaky cabinet doors and ancient appliances, Clarice and Ardelia explained their visit to Fredrica’s father, Gustav Bimmel. Gustav was a frayed-looking man with rough hands. He shrugged and agreed to let them into Fredrica’s room to look around, but he had nothing new to tell them.

“She went to Columbus on the bus to see about a job interview,” Gustav explained as they climbed the stairs to the second floor. “Then she never came home. I told all the cops this before.”

“I know, sir,” Clarice said. “I’m just trying to get an idea of where the kidnapper might have seen Fredrica. Where she might have noticed your daughter.”

“I couldn’t say,” said Gustav with a tight voice. He gestured to door at the end of the hallway with signs and stickers taped to it. “Here you go. I’ll be downstairs. Let me know when you’re finished up here.”

Beyond the door was Fredrica’s bedroom. The air was still and musty, and last year’s calendar on the wall was forever turned to April. Fredrica had been missing for ten months, and her family had left her room just the same ever since. It was the room of a smart, creative young girl who made the best of what she had available to her. The sheer floral curtains on the windows looked like they were recycled from slip covers and embellished with delicate beading. Bright, shiny self-adhesive paper covered the walls, which were decorated with classic movie posters held up with thumbtacks and tape. Her twin day bed frame was old, white with dull decorative brass knobs and the mattress cover by a well-worn duvet.

On the bookshelf were stuffed animals and photos of Fredrica, her family, and her friends. The photos were full of smiles, even on overcast days in a dismal little town. Standing in the middle of the room, Clarice and Ardelia slowly turned to inspect every detail, every little moment caught in time.

“Okay.” Finally, Ardelia let out a sigh. She dug her hands into her jacket pockets and took another look around. “You’re the profiler here, Clarice. What are we looking for?”

Clarice took a deep breath. She collected herself as her thoughts scattered, swept away in the inconsequential details of Fredrica’s too-short life.

“The premise here is our skinner did Fredrica first,” Clarice said. “Weighted her down and hid her well, in a river far from home. She did her better than the rest to make sure they were found first. Because she lives here, or maybe in Columbus.”

Ardelia nodded. “She started with Fredrica because she coveted her skin. And we covet what we see every day, so she must have known Fredrica. Seen her.”

Moving to the bookshelf, Clarice picked up a framed picture to examine. It was a photo of Fredrica, in the front row of her high school marching band. She was a small, wide girl: big and beautiful with perfect skin. Her features were plain but pretty. Cheery. Hopeful. Good.

“She didn’t hate Fredrica,” Clarice mused aloud. “She might hate the others, but not her. Fredrica’s too sweet a girl to hate like that. So her killer was jealous of her – of her skin. She had to take it, and hide what she’d done.”

In the corner was a little white vanity, with its elaborately feminine woodwork and flaking paint. Old and well-loved, as though Fredrica had it since she was a little girl, just like her bed. There was makeup and nail polish on the counter, knock-off perfumes and grocery store skin creams. Some cheap jewelry spilled out of a wooden box, next to a collection of yard sale knick-knack ceramic owls. Fredrica valued her appearance, but she wasn’t vain. She was humble. Thrifty.

Clarice walked to the closet and pulled back the folding double doors. Fredrica’s wardrobe was small but nice, neatly hung and arranged on plastic hangers. Upon closer inspection, she realized they were all handmade, and well-made, by Fredrica. Stacks of patterns were on a shelf in the back of the closet. Some were simple, just sundresses and blouses; others were complex, calling for detailed embroidery and accents.

What had Hannibal said? That Jessica was making a woman suit out of real women. And that, as Will had told her, she was taking the skins in cuts like sewing patterns. The realization hit Clarice in a rush of pure, fierce joy: Jessica could sew, and she was well-trained. Just like Fredrica was. This must have been how they knew each other.

Downstairs, Clarice found Gustav in the kitchen. Coffee cup in hand, looking out the window. She felt a faint guilt for bothering him again.

“Sir, the casefile said your daughter worked in retail before she disappeared. Do you remember where all she worked?”

Gustav sighed and tapped a hand on the counter, trying to summon up the memory. “I know she used to work at the Bargain Center over the summers, then she got on at Richards’ doing alterations. Fredrica was working for old Mrs. Lippman over on Rosewater Way, until she retired. That was when Fredrica started looking for a new job in Columbus.”

“Did he ever have trouble with anybody?” asked Ardelia. “A coworker, maybe a customer? It would’ve been a woman, in her 30s?”

Gustav shook his head. “No, not that I know of. Mrs. Lippman would’ve known about that kind of thing better than me.”

Clarice asked, “Is there any way we can get in contact with her?”

“She died, actually. She went down to Florida to retire and died down there, from what I understood. Her family still owns her old house – at least, they did for a while. I can get you the address, if you like.”

“Yes, thank you. That’d help us a lot, sir.”

As Gustav Bimmel wrote down Mrs. Lippman’s address on a sticky-note, Clarice reached for her phone.

V.

In the rented car parked over a pothole, Clarice waited for Crawford to pick up his phone. On the third ring, the line clicked.

“Crawford.”

“Good, sir, listen – I think our skinner can sew,” Clarice quickly explained. “She’s skilled, professionally trained. Bimmel could sew, too. I think that’s how they knew each other. ID Section can search Known Offenders for tailors, seamstresses, upholsterers — ”

“Slow down, Starling,” Crawford said. The hum of a car engine meant that he was driving, or being driven somewhere. “We figured out the sewing angle. Got a hit on Jame Gumb’s last known whereabouts.”

“Where?”

“Calumet City, outside Chicago. She used to work under the name Jessica Grant, at a leather goods shop called Ms. Hide. Hostage Rescue’s on their way now.”

Clarice’s stomach tightened. “Can I go?”

“No, Starling. We’ve got two marshals coming in from Chicago, and a nurse on stand-by for Martin if we can recover her in time. It’s covered.”

“Sir – ”

“You’re doing Bimmel’s acquaintances. Stay with it. We need whatever you get to tie Grant to Bimmel. We need this to stick any way we can.”

Clarice swallowed. “Sure.”

“If we get her in Calumet City, you come to Quantico at 0800. I’m taking you in front of the board. It may not stand for much, but I won’t let you get recycled without fight.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Crawford hung up. Clarice took a deep breath. She felt unsteady, weak in her hands as she stared at her phone’s screen. Ardelia regarded her with a worried look.

“What is it?”

“Crawford says they think they found her in Calumet City,” said Clarice. “Hostage Rescue’s on their way.”

Ardelia’s expression pinched. “Are they going to get there on time?”

“I don’t know. I hope so.”

“So, what now? What do we do?”

“We keep working our angle – try to establish a link between Bimmel and our skinner. A criminal case is going to need everything we can dig up.”

Nodding, Ardelia said, “Okay. So we focus on Fredrica, and we try to stick it to her killer however we can.”

“Yeah,” Clarice agreed, and put her key in the ignition.

VI.

Jessica Grant went ahead with her ritual in the late afternoon. Alone in her bed, with tears pearled in the corners of her eyes. She watched the VHS tape over and over again, going through the motions. Mom, on stage. Mom, in her bikini. Mom, with her perfect skin.

Finally, she couldn’t stand it any longer. That thing in the basement was holding her Precious prisoner, threatening her life. Precious, who was in pain. Jessica didn’t know if she could kill the thing before it hurt Precious again, but she had to try. She had to.

Stripping, she put on her robe. She always finished a harvest naked and bloody. From her medicine cabinet she retrieved everything she might need – antiseptic, bandages, and Q-Tips. Tongue depressors in the workroom in the basement could be used for splints on the dog’s broken leg, if it came to that. Then all it would take was a headshot to put the stupid thing out of its misery for hurting her Precious.

Quietly down the stairs, to the hatchery for her infrared goggles. The world glowed green as Jessica found her pistol in the workroom. From there she crept, slowly and silently, into the oubliette room. In the bottom of the well the material laid curled on its side, perhaps asleep. Precious was curled up close to its body for warmth. Not moving – sleeping, not dead. Please, not dead, not dead, not dead.

The head of the material was exposed. Jessica leaned over the mouth of the well and cocked her pistol. It felt warm and heavy and wonderful in her hand. She drew a deep breath and aimed for the side of its head.

Then the doorbell rang.


	13. The Child of Wolves

I.

Mrs. Lippman’s house sat at the far end of a dead-end street in Belvedere, Ohio. It was shabbier than the other houses on this grubby side of town, where the trees were overgrown and junk sat scattered in the front yard. Clarice Starling rang the doorbell twice. Ardelia Mapp stood beside her on the porch. The porch was big but uninviting, its bench swing chewed by bad weather and the rail bannisters busted open and splintering. There was a white panel van in the driveway. Beside it was a little four-door sedan with a mismatched hood.

Someone was home. Clarice rang again.

After a moment, the door opened in a sliver. It was held in place by a tarnished lock-chain. A woman’s face appeared to stare out, the single, pale blue eye ringed by smudged mascara.

“Hi,” Ardelia said, with the pleasantness Clarice lacked. “We’re looking for Mrs. Lippman’s family. Do you mind helping us?”

“They don’t live here.”

Jessica Grant closed the door. She only made it three steps into the foyer before Clarice pounded on the door. Jessica huffed out a sigh, pushed the sweaty hair back from her face, and opened the door on its chain. This time Clarice held up her and Ardelia’s FBI credentials for Jessica to see.

“Excuse me, but we need to talk to you, ma’am. I want to find the family of Mrs. Lippman,” Clarice said. “I know she lived here. I just need to see if you can help me find out more information on them. Please.”

“Mrs. Lippman’s been dead for ages. She didn’t have any family that I know of.”

“What about a lawyer, or an accountant? Somebody who’d have her business records?” asked Ardelia. “Did you know Mrs. Lippman personally, or?”

“Just briefly,” answered Jessica. “What’s the problem?”

“We’re investigating the death of Fredrica Bimmel,” said Clarice. “Can you tell us who you are, please?”

Jessica bristled at the name. “Jackie Gordon.”

“Did you know Fredrica Bimmel, by any chance?” Ardelia kept asking the softer questions, tried to keep the conversation as light as possible. “She worked for Mrs. Lippman for a while.”

“Was she a thick girl?”

The question gave Clarice pause. “Yes, she was.”

“No. I mean, I may have seen her. I’m not sure.” Jessica pulled back the chain to open the door to the foyer. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be rude, you just woke me up from a nap.”

Clarice relaxed back. She knew she was on edge about Calumet City and the Hostage Rescue team on their way to Jessica Grant’s house. About Catherine Martin face-down in the mud. But she had to think about something, anything, else but that.

“Can you answer a few questions for us, Ms. Gordon?”

Jessica – Jackie – nodded. “Mrs. Lippman had a lawyer. I may have his card somewhere. I’ll see if I can find it. Do you mind stepping in for a minute, though, agents? I’m freezing and I’m afraid my cat will run through here any second – she’ll be out of here like a shot before I can catch her.”

Smiling, Jessica closed the door behind Clarice and Ardelia as they stood, politely and uncomfortably, in the foyer. She went to a rolltop desk in the far corner of the cluttered little kitchen, raised the top, and looked through the loose papers inside. Ardelia put her hands in her pockets, mindful of the mess. Dust danced through the air as it glittered in the shafts of light coming through the half-drawn plastic blinds. There was tattered old furniture in the living room and scuffed wooden floors under their feet, and everything looked dingy and unkempt. Clarice took her notebook from her purse.

“That horrible business,” called Jessica from the kitchen, rummaging through the desk’s contents, “with that poor Bimmel girl. Are they close to catching somebody, do you think?”

“We’re working on it,” Clarice answered. “Ms. Gordon, did you take over this place after Mrs. Lippman died?”

“Yes.” Jessica bent over the desk to open a drawer, her back to Clarice and Ardelia. “I worked with her for a while. Once she went to Florida, I stayed behind to look after the place.”

“Were there any business records left here? Invoices, payroll, anything like that?”

“No, nothing like that at all. Does the FBI have any ideas? The police in this town don’t seem to know anything, but that’s not saying much. Do they have a description? Or maybe some fingerprints?”

Clarice and Ardelia exchanged glances.

“Nothing really,” Clarice said. “Just a few odd leads we’re here to follow up on.”

“Once we have this, we’ll be out of your hair,” added Ardelia amiably.

“Oh, it’s no bother at all.”

From among the delicate folds of Jessica’s robe crawled a death’s-head moth. It crept along on spindly legs to the center of Jessica’s back and stopped to flutter its wings. The skull on its thorax, made of downy white hairs, stared at Clarice and Ardelia, small but visible at a distance. Clarice dropped her notebook back into her bag and turned to Ardelia. Her heart began to race. Ardelia regarded her gravely, but said nothing.

_What now, what now, what now?_

Jessica turned around and produced an old business card. It was tea-stained with foxed edges. She smiled again. “Here you go.”

Clarice smiled, or tried to. She didn’t step into the kitchen to take it, still maintaining her distance.

“Good. Thank you, Ms. Gordon. I’d hate to trouble you again, but we’re getting no bars out here on our phones. Would you mind if I used your phone to make a call to my superior?”

Jessica placed the card on the table. As she moved, the moth flew from her robe and settled gently on the nearby sink. Jessica saw it just as Clarice and Ardelia did. When their eyes never moved from Jessica’s face, she knew. They all three knew each other, then, if only for that moment. They knew how this would have to end.

Betraying nothing, Jessica’s smile never wavered. “I have a cordless line in the pantry. I’ll get it for you.”

Clarice’s blood ran hot. She went for the gun in her side-holster – one smooth motion, just as she’d done a thousand times before at the firing range and in training drills. Two-hand hold, her entire world narrowed to the point at the end of the barrel. The sight and Jessica’s chest. Calumet City was a bust; Jack Crawford was leading Hostage Rescue into a bogus address. Catherine Martin was _here_.

Jessica pursed her lips.

“Now. Slowly. Put your hands up.”

Ardelia stepped back. Her hand was already on her side-holster, just in case.

“Ms. Gor – Ms. Grant,” Clarice corrected herself, hating the shudder in her voice. “You’re under arrest. I want you to put your hands up and slowly walk outside with us.”

If Jessica reached for her pocket, or reached behind her – if Clarice saw her reach for a weapon – Clarice could have fired. All three of them knew that. But instead, Jessica smirked, walked out of the room, and disappeared down the basement stairs with a slam of the door.

II.

Clarice’s hand trembled at the sound of the door banging shut. Her stomach dropped out. She took a deep breath to steady her aim, then bolted around the kitchen table to the top of the stairwell.

“Call this in.”

Jessica was gone. Beyond the door, the stairwell was brightly lit and empty. It was a trap, and Clarice knew it. Ardelia was behind her and already dialing her phone.

“What about her?”

From deep within the basement, they heard Catherine Martin scream. Clarice raced down the stairs, even as every nerve singing under her skin told her _trap, trap, trap_. Ardelia followed at her heels, one hand holding her phone to her ear, the other on her drawn pistol. The double doors at the end of the stairwell were ajar and swinging on their rusted hinges. With a push they opened to a long, rambling hallway, lined on either side with doors. The sound of screaming filled the space, echoing in the unseen rooms that stretched out in all directions.

Clarice tried to cover them as they moved over the threshold, surrounded by hard angles and entrance points. Hiding places and blind spots. They couldn’t get through one door without turning their backs to the others, opening themselves up to attack. Quickly, she decided, to lead through the door on her left to follow the scream to its most likely source. Ardelia had to whisper to complete her call, repeating their location over and over until she finally hung up.

Into the oubliette room, clearing the doorway fast, Clarice’s eyes widened and her hands shook. Ardelia tucked the phone into her back pocket and steadied her grip on her weapon, following Clarice’s lead. A scream rose from inside the well, then the sound of a dog’s yapping bark. Clarice and Ardelia approached, Ardelia’s aim trained on the nearest door as Clarice looked over the edge.

“FBI,” Clarice said automatically, as she had been trained to say. To calm down the hostage. “You’re safe.”

“I’m not safe – shit, she has a gun!” Catherine yelled back, the dog wriggling in her arms. “Get me out of here! GET ME OUT!”

“We’ll get you out. We promise. You just have to be quiet.” Clarice turned to Ardelia and said, breathlessly, “Stay with her. Keep her quiet, I’ll find a ladder or some rope.”

Ardelia nodded and they traded positions. She tried to calm Catherine as Clarice searched the room for anything useful. Finally, Clarice spotted a small hand winch bolted to a wall beam. There was no line on the drum. Clarice took a deep breath. _There must have been rope somewhere_. _There’s lots of rooms, lots of storage_. Gun drawn, she moved to the door to the nearby workroom in one quick pass. Then over the threshold and through the room, passed the tanks, the sinks, and the cages of squeaking, fluttering moths. Past that, there was another corridor, lit up brightly as it opened to even more doors and even more rooms.

Clarice moved door to door to peer inside. She eventually found an old bathroom, with ropes, hooks, and a sling suspended from the ceiling. The sound of breathing – slow and heavy – told her that Jessica was somewhere close. Clarice sucked in a breath then ducked into the bathroom to get the rope. Inside was a big bathtub, filled with a hard, red plaster. A hand and wrist stuck out from the casing, its skin shriveled up and bony, its nails painted a rosy pink. Mrs. Lippman never made it to Florida, after all. The dainty gold watch drooping from the skeletal wrist was the last thing Clarice saw before the lights blinked out.

Catherine screamed big and loud in the dark. The sudden, sharp rise of fear made Clarice’s heart pound. _Breathe. Don’t panic._ With a splayed hand, she felt her way out of the bathroom and into the hall. Every light was out. Jessica must have pulled the fuse. Where was the fuse box? Clarice tried to think. Likely by the stairs, for ease of access. Ardelia and Catherine were between Clarice and the stairs, which meant Jessica was closer to them than she was. She could hear Catherine crying, the dog whimpering, and Ardelia trying to soothe them both.

Clarice walked quickly, quietly, her shoulders brushing against the wall. One hand felt for purchase while the other held the gun. She found her way from the workroom, the space opening up around her, no more corners or hard edges. Clarice drew the gun up, arms out, crouching her way through as she pressed herself to the wall at her back.

Something moved in the dark. The beat of wings? No, Clarice realized. Breathing.

III.

Against the wall, Jessica stood with her goggles on. She watched Clarice, shaking, sweating, fearful in the blackness that swallowed the basement whole. She listened for the others in the oubliette room and soaked it all in. She felt excited for it. Bright. Alive.

Jessica wasn’t afraid of them – these girls. They couldn’t stop her. This could be fun, too, like the silly games she would play with those other girls. She wouldn’t have to worry about hurting either of these two, or their hides. Lovely though they were – smooth and soft, free of scars and with a healthy flush in the cheeks – both of them were too thin for her needs.

It was fun to watch Clarice try to sneak along the wall. Crouched low, as though she wasn’t already caught. Hip pressed against the sink, gun out, listening for the whimpering and sobbing in the next room. It would be exciting to hunt an armed one. Jessica had never done that before, but there wasn’t much time for that now.

Jessica cocked her pistol as she brought it up. Clarice’s figure bloomed bright white in her field of vision as she pulled the trigger. She didn’t even think about it. The flash was blinding, the bang so loud in the workroom that between that and the recoil Jessica stumbled back. Missing, the bullet hit the wall above Clarice’s head and chewed up the concrete. Clarice dropped to the ground, flash-blind, deafened by the blast. Catherine was screaming again. Precious barked and whined. Jessica felt sorry for the racket of it and cocked the gun again, steadying herself as she waited for her rattled senses to return.

Panicked, Clarice fired her gun in the direction that the initial shot came from. The shot and the click of the hammer, the sound of breathing. Squeezed the trigger and fired, fired, fired. There was the hard, heavy sound of metal slugs hitting meat. Jessica fell back, four bullets slicing hot entry wounds through her chest and belly. They punctured soft tissue and organs, knocking Jessica down to cough up blood and breathe through the holes in her lungs in a wet, sucking noise.

Clarice crawled away from the sound, out of arm’s reach. She was sightless in the dark, shaking from the recoil of the gun. Over the sucking of Jessica’s labored breath, Clarice could hear Ardelia in the next room.

“Clarice? Are you okay? Please, please, please—”

Clarice followed Ardelia’s voice to the promise of safety as Jessica Grant died quietly in the dirt. Dying, because Clarice Starling killed her. Somewhere deep inside of her ribcage, behind her hammering heart where black thoughts slept, Clarice felt the pangs of certainty – and relief.

IV.

The local television crews arrived after the fire department, but before the Belvedere police. Clarice and Ardelia sat in the back of an ambulance together as the police held the reporters behind barriers across the street. Clarice couldn’t stop shaking. Ardelia never let go of her hands.

A fireman went into the well to pull out Catherine, putting her in a rescue chair to lift her up to safety. Catherine came out holding Precious, gripping the little dog for comfort and holding her in the ambulance. By dinner time, all their photos would be on the news, next to the grisly headlines. _Skinner Shot. Congresswoman’s Daughter Rescued from House of Horrors. Monsters in Suburbia. Most Notorious Female Serial Killer of All Time?_

Somewhere, Freddie Lounds was taking notes for her next book. In the meantime, Emilia Strand’s photo on the _TattleCrime_ website was soon replaced with Jessica Grant’s and Clarice Starling’s faces. While sensational, the unsubstantiated daughter of Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham would have to take a backseat to the bigger, gorier, confirmed story.

Closing the browser on his tablet, Will Graham was content in that trade.

V.

There were fifty people waiting at the National Airport in Washington to meet the red-eye flight from Columbus. Most of those gathered there had come to receive family members, huddled around the baggage claim carousel to collect relatives and luggage at the same time. Jack Crawford was there for Clarice Starling as she and Ardelia Mapp stepped through the glass double doors, jet-lagged and bone-tired.

“I…” Crawford started to say, then caught himself with something like a smile. “You know what you did. You hit a home run, kid. The both of you.”

Under the numbness, the exhaustion, and everything else they dragged with them from the Rust Belt, Clarice’s chest felt warm and full. “Thank you, sir.”

“The academy won’t recycle you, Starling. They can’t afford it. You’ll have to cram for the makeups, but you’re not going anywhere.”

“I appreciate you sticking up for me.”

“I didn’t have to,” he said. “You did that on your own.”

The ride to Quantico was long and silent. Clarice sat beside Ardelia in the back seat of Crawford’s black SUV, their fingers laced together. She didn’t care what he saw. She wanted to ask about so many things, but her mouth was stuffed up with cotton, her mind dim behind her eyes. Clarice thought she’d feel justified or proud of the job she did on Jessica Grant. Instead, she felt a little bit sad.

Maybe Will had been wrong about her. Maybe it would take more than a few bad days to put her in a cage, after all.

Clarice and Ardelia had each given their depositions in Belvedere, in a marathon of interviews and written statements. In the little crackerbox of an interview room, two detectives explained what they knew about Jessica Grant. They told her a disappointing story about a failed beauty queen out of Sacramento, who developed a drug habit when her modeling and acting career fizzled out. Now a single mother with a new mouth to feed, she left her child with abusive grandparents whose cruelty warped little, lonely Jame Gumb into a murderer by the age of 12. It all went so wrong from there, a lifetime of pain and scars that led to Jessica Grant bleeding out in a warm basement in a dead-end town. Nothing about it seemed like a win.

Crawford’s eyes in the rearview mirror brought Clarice back out of the dark and dirty basement.

“Senator Martin’s been on the phone overnight,” he said. “She wants to see you two. Catherine does, too, as soon as she can travel.”

“She okay?” asked Ardelia.

“Martin said she was doing well. In shock, sleeping off the worst of it, but we’re counting our blessings on this one.”

“They say faith is a fine invention,” Clarice found herself saying aloud. After a moment, she sighed. “Have you heard from Lecter and Graham?”

Crawford’s eyes in the rearview grew narrow. Adrelia’s fingers tightened around Clarice’s hand, but she said nothing. They both saw the text messages, the photo of Emilia, and the promise to visit a friend.

“They got to Chilton,” Crawford said. “Had a field day with him.”

“Alive?” Clarice asked.

“For now. Lecter and Graham are platinum – at the top of everybody’s most wanted list. They’re busy at the moment, but when they’re not – you should be careful, Starling.”

“Lecter and Graham won’t call on me. It would be…discourteous of them.”

“You’d make that bet?”

“If either of them wanted me dead, Will Graham would have killed me in the back of that transport van. I’m more interesting to them alive.” Clarice paused, feeling a little queasy at the thought. She knew what she said about wolves, and how she felt about stolen babies. Sitting in the backseat of Crawford’s SUV as he looked at her like her father used to, it was hard to stay bitter about it. “They’ll come for you, Jack. They promised they would.”

“You spoke to them?”

She paused, then nodded. “They found their baby.”

“I know.”

“Will you run?”

Crawford was the one who paused this time. Finally, he said, “We three have unfinished business.”

Ardelia clasped Clarice’s hand the rest of the way to Quantico.

VI.

When Ardelia wasn’t helping Clarice study for her makeup exams, they were in bed. Together, sleeping, curled into one another on the too-small mattress. If anyone had anything to say about their relationship, it was never spoken of in classrooms or hallways. This was the new little ball of silence that blossomed whenever Clarice entered the room. Clarice Starling, the trainee who survived Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter. The trainee who killed Jessica Grant. The trainee who longer of dreamt of wolf teeth and blood, wrapped in the coil of Ardelia’s arms.

But no one needed to know about that.

At 3:03am, Clarice’s phone rang on the dresser. She untangled herself from the calming trap of Ardelia’s body and got up to answer it. The caller ID said _Unknown_. She didn’t hesitate to answer it this time.

“Either you don’t respect my time zone, or you aren’t sleeping.”

“Sleep is a foreign concept when you have a three-year-old who insists on co-sleeping,” Will Graham said softly on the other end of the line.

“I can only imagine.”

It was the most content she had ever heard him. Wherever he was, it was likely night and similarly silent. She could picture him padding quietly through a kitchen, in a house somewhere; checking locks and shutting off lights, like somebody’s father would. Somebody’s husband. Strange that the thought came so easily to her now, in the face of things. That she didn’t think of blood or teeth when she heard his voice.

“I’ve seen the news.”

“It’s hard to avoid, isn’t it?” she asked. “Have you called for a thank you?”

“What we do for one another isn’t laudable, Agent Starling. It’s a matter of courtesy.” He paused. “You did the right thing.”

It almost sounded like pity when he spoke, or the weight of a shared secret. She didn’t want his pity and refused to accept it as such.

“I know. Thank you for that.”

“Don’t thank me yet. I actually called to ask you a question.”

“What is it?”

“Did Jessica Grant have a dog?”

“Yeah, a poodle. I think her name was Precious,” Clarice answered. “She was left with Animal Control in Belvedere. Why?”

“Curiosity,” Will said. “Goodnight, Clarice.”

“Goodnight, Will.”

VII.

Jack Crawford pulled into the driveway just as the street lights flickered to life on his street. His big and empty house was meant to be silent. It had been silent for years now. The house had grown steadily less alive as Bella’s cancer spread; once she died, she took all the life with her. He was used to that now. As Crawford opened the front door and withdrew his key, he found his house filled with the evidence of another human presence. The certainty of it was cold: a child’s voice bubbling on the other side of the wall, the smell of food cooking in the kitchen, and the patter of clawed feet on the hardwood floor.

He walked down the hallway toward the living room, a hand on his side arm. A little white poodle peeked around the corner of the dining room doorway. Her nametags jangled from her collar. She gave a small, playful bark before bolting away with a furiously wagging tail. Inside, the table was already set for dinner with four place settings. Crawford sighed. His hand fell away from the holster.

“Hello, Jack,” said Hannibal Lecter. Crawford turned to see him at the kitchen doorway. He folded his sleeves carefully at the forearms, his suit jacket left in the kitchen while he cooked. “I see you received our invitation.”

“How could I say no?”

“So good of you to join us, then. Please, have a seat. Dinner is nearly prepared. We’ll be having venison.”

“Well. The recipe called for venison,” said Will Graham, holding Emilia in his arms. She wore a black dress and patent leather shoes. The dog snuffled at Will’s heels as he stood at the threshold of the hallway. “But I’m sure you can venture a guess who’s coming to dinner, Jack.”

The doors were blocked. They weren’t armed, but it didn’t matter. Crawford had his fire arm if it came to that. It wouldn’t come to that. If this were another time – another life, another series of events – perhaps it could have. Instead, he watched Emilia pluck at the buttons of her father’s shirt, and smiled despite the black feeling in the pit of his stomach.

“Is that your little girl?”

Will nodded, his expression softening by degrees. “Yes.”

“She looks like she’ll be a real heartbreaker one day.”

“She already is.”

“I bet.” Then Crawford nodded and said, “Let’s sit, shall we?”

As Jack Crawford took his place at the table, everything was as it was meant to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So it goes. Mystery Girlfriends save the day, Murder Family goes off into the sunset together, and Jack Crawford finally takes his place at the table. If you've made it this far, I'd like to thank you so much for coming along for the ride. I appreciate the interest, feedback, and fanart I've received. This series has been a fun and deeply satisfying experience to work on, and it means a lot to know that it resonated with people as much as it did.
> 
> For now, I have to say that this is the end. I have a few other story ideas, but I can't say for sure how or when those ideas will take shape. I really do love Emilia and am curious to ponder how she'll come up in the world. Hopefully we'll meet again some day and find out.


End file.
